Beethoven Sonata #29 in B-flat Major, op. 106 "Hammerklavier" (with Beethoven's tempi) 1. Allegro (0:01) 2. Scherzo: Assai vivace (8:12) 3. Adagio sostenuto (11:00) 4. Introduzione: Largo - Fuga: Allegro risoluto (27:35) Eunice Norton, piano Recorded in 1988. (Note: This live recording was Norton's final performance of this work.) (Norton's 1965 Recording: http://youtu.be/OFrVnCKD_Nk) EUNICE NORTON ON THE HAMMERKLAVIER: In the Hammerklavier Sonata, Beethoven has transformed into sound an extraordinary concept of the order of universe. He has explored and exposed the whole great scheme of things; his understanding of space, of the movements of the heavenly spheres, of the chaotic irregularities and the magnetic powers that hold all in balance, the ultimate harmony and peace—and the revelation of it all. Beethoven has explored all the resources of the human soul. One hears chiseled out in strong contrasts the staggering physical power of nature and the comparative impotence of man. But one hears more insistently the meteoric flights of man's mind and spirit. In the sound of this music one feels the solitariness of the single soul in contemplation of the infinite heights to which we may ascend—one lone human being contemplating the magnificence of nature. Beethoven explores the mysterious unknown—the awesome beauty of silence. Never was sound so silent; never was silence so moving. Beethoven's concepts were as modern as Einstein himself. He gave his concepts eternal life through the language of music, as all-inclusive and abreast of our times as the meaning it expresses. Opus 106 is contemporary in every sense of the word. Those artists who create in one style only are small indeed in the presence of Beethoven, who is classicist, romanticist, impressionist, and cubist; whose art is abstract and not abstract, and who includes with magnificent effect all of the styles in one work, because the meaning of the work is all-inclusive. Perhaps the developments in musical composition in the past one hundred years have helped to clarify this sonata, which has been little understood until this century. To listen to contemporary music one has learned to listen not for melodic threads, but for sound masses, for sound forms and figurations, and rhythmic patterns. This is a good way to approach understanding this great masterpiece. No doubt, the fact that Beethoven was unable to hear except in his imagination made this extraordinary work possible. Every external problem was non-existent. Without concern for the pianistic problems, he forged miraculous sounds from the instrument, sound possibilities never before imagined. The fact that Beethoven sketched many versions of a first subject before he started to build a composition undoubtedly means that he had considered and reconsidered every tone and every group of tones in the subject so absolutely that the development of the material for the entire composition must have been crystallizing in his mind during the long period of the evolution of the first few bars. When he started to construct the whole, the musical ideas for the complete work (the germs of which are all contained in the first subject) burst forth with amazing freshness and spontaneity. The use and development of the first exclamatory subject in this sonata is like life propagating from life—ideas germinating like the multiplication of living cells. The birth of Opus 106 might be likened to the initial birth of living matter—a spontaneous process, but molded into a large plan by a mastermind. ...We are incredibly fortunate to have an edition with Beethoven's specific instructions to guide us in our interpretations. The composers before him were not in the habit of preserving as accurately so much information about how to play their pieces. Until this became available, musicians were working in the dark. However, even Beethoven's instructions go unheeded sometimes, as with op. 106. I think only Schnabel and I play the piece at the actual speed of his metronome mark, which is 138 for the first movement. Beethoven made his feelings about the metronome well known, so I cannot understand why pianists are afraid to attempt this. Though what we see in his scores may not always be easy to comprehend, we must humble ourselves and finally achieve his instructions. To ignore these instructions means we cannot even touch these works as Beethoven envisaged them. A musician can only begin to glimpse his towering genius after incorporating them.

• published: 19 May 2011
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