Pity poor Piano Sonata No. 22. Just two movements and ten minutes in length, and stuck between the Waldstein and the Appassionata. It’s terribly neglected, yet it knows deep down that it’s just as rich and complex as its two neighbors.
Lewis Lockwood finds Beethoven’s 21st and 22nd piano sonatas to be a deliberate contrasting pair:
As in other middle-period pairings, a long, powerful, and brilliant work [the Waldstein] is succeeded by a short and quiet one, with Beethoven creating a double image and a deliberate contrast, a reminder of the balance between great and small, between seemingly opposed and adjacent modes of being that can complement one another, as a rare flower grows by a large tree. His contribution to the Romantic literature of aesthetic doubles are most easily seen in his piano sonatas, but he explored them as well in the symphony and other chamber music. (Beethoven, pp. 295–6)
The first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 22 is in the tempo of a minuet. As Angela Hewitt has written in the liner notes to her Hyperion recording,
it starts in a well-behaved manner — very elegantly as the dance marking suggests. Then all hell breaks loose. Octave triplets with emphatic sforzandos swirl around each other in imitation. Then the right hand changes into sixths in what is almost like a computer loop.
There’s some doubt that the 1st movement of Piano Sonata No. 22 is even a minuet. Maybe it’s a rondo in disguise whose contrasting themes prompted one analyst to label it “La Belle et la Bête.” Eventually the two personalities merge but with Beauty not quite conquering the Beast.
The perpetual motion second movement of Piano Sonata 22 is relentless but humorous, with thrilling syncopations. Eric Blom notes that “the unbroken flow of even notes … is written strictly in two single parts, with the result that such harmony as is produced is transparent and constantly shifting in the most alluring way.”
#Beethoven250 Day 182
Piano Sonata No. 22 in F Major (Opus 54), 1804
A delightful performance by Toronto-born pianist Ben Cruchley in a competition in Vienna.
“My dear boy,” Beethoven said to one of his students, “the startling effects, which many ascribe solely to the natural genius of the composer, are quite frequently easily achieved by the right use and resolution of the chord of the diminished seventh.”