Beethoven’s music abounds in Romantic fervor, especially the breakout pieces of his middle years. And the otherworldly mysticism of his late works transcends historical period.In essential ways, however, Beethoven remained a Viennese Classical composer throughout his life, something that came across eloquently in the Austrian pianist Till Fellner’s all-Beethoven program at the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday night.
With this recital Mr. Fellner crossed the halfway mark of his three-year survey of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas, which he has been presenting at the Met and in other halls around the world. On this night Mr. Fellner, whose thoughtful musicianship is complemented by his lanky, bookish manner, played a demanding, well-conceived program of five works, ending with the Sonata No. 21 in C, the monumental “Waldstein.” His performances emphasized structural coherence, proportion, textural clarity, dynamic balance, rhythmic integrity and other hallmarks of the Classical style.
For some, Mr. Fellner’s insightful, beautifully self-effacing Beethoven may be almost too refined. In the first work, Sonata No. 12 in A flat, Mr. Fellner played the breezy main theme of the first movement with taste and simplicity. Yet as this movement — a theme and variations — unfolded, he brought a touch of wry wit to his cool playing to let us hear how cleverly Beethoven altered, transformed and varied that seemingly innocuous theme.
He took the scherzo at a fleet tempo, while still bringing transparency to every finger-twisting burst of passagework. In the folklike middle section he brought out what seemed a hint of Austrian schmaltz I had not realized was there. The funeral march was a true march, which moved at a stately pace. I have heard it played more tragically, but Mr. Fellner’s fresh approach allowed the middle section, with its rumbling chords and flourishes, to make more sense: here was a heroic salute to the departed. And every musical nuance came through clearly in his intriguingly subdued performance of the perpetual-motion finale.
Before giving an affectingly reserved account of the “Moonlight” Sonata, Mr. Fellner played its much-less-heard companion piece from Op. 27: the Sonata No. 13 in E flat, a work that in its way is just as fantastical and audacious. There was also an articulate, lithe performance of the two-movement Sonata No. 22 in F.
At first I thought I was not going to like Mr. Fellner’s “Waldstein.” Rather than emphasizing the rhythmic drive of the repeated chord theme of the first movement, he took a restrained tempo and allowed the music to emerge in an eerie, slightly murky rumble of harmony. But I soon came around to his concept, which maximized the architectonic structure of the entire sonata.
The second movement came through as an almost-improvisatory interlude that set up the finale, which Mr. Fellner played with magisterial restraint and myriad colorings. And when the prestissimo coda of the finale arrived, for once it truly seemed a wild and crazy final outburst.
published Monday, Feb. 15th
The New York Times
Note: Till Fellner’s next Beethoven piano sonata recital will be on March 26th at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; (212) 570-3949, metmuseum.org.