November | 2011 | WPRB Blog

Over the next few weeks, we are going to listen to Thomas Sauer’s performances of three Beethoven piano sonatas from Opus 31, the 16th, 17th and 18th. I plan to begin on November 7th with number sixteen, a sonata that my Aunt Lucy, a fine, professional classical pianist, called “The Girl Next Door Sonata.” To help make sense of this nickname, I must start with an anecdote about my aunt.

Lucy Brown lived on the west side of Manhattan. I suspect we have all had the experience of hearing someone in our neighborhood practice seriously on their instrument. In parts of Manhattan, classical music wafted out of building after apartment building, especially in the era before everyone owned air conditioners. Somewhere nearby, my aunt often heard a particular woman play. This was an amateur, good at the piano. That woman – you’re probably wondering why I call this mystery pianist a woman – often worked on a particular Chopin Nocturne, and at one moment – always the same point – she played a wrong note. Lucy was sure that this amateur had just never read the music correctly. That wrong note drove her batty because, well, where was this pianist? She could never figure it out. There was no way to set this player straight, and instead, my aunt was condemned to hear that wrong note, again and again.

Eventually that playing ceased, and Lucy heard the wrong note no more. Perhaps the player had given up the piano, or, more likely, moved away.

Years later, my aunt was at a swank, evening party. A woman sat down and started to play this very Chopin Nocturne. As the moment of the wrong note approached, awareness of the Chopin knifed through my aunt’s awareness. She tensed up listening, and, YES! It was the same performer, and YES! She played the same wrong note.

“Of course, I corrected her,” my aunt said. Knowing my aunt, I believe she hurtled through the crowd, seized the offending page, banged her fist on the offending note, and shouted “E-FLAT, not E!” loud enough to bring all conversation to a halt. But there you have it: the performer next door who always repeats something wrong.

Update: How embarrassing. In the next para and below, I have fixed my reversal of right and left hands. The RIGHT hand plays before the beat, not the left. My sense of East and West is not so good, either.
Beethoven’s sixteenth piano sonata, Opus 31 #1 in G major, begins with a gimmick. On the downbeat, and on many other beats, the two hands seem unable to play together, because the right hand plays a sixteenth note before the beat. Here’s a conventional recording of the sonata’s opening, to show you what I mean. {Here, I play an excerpt from a different recording than Thomas Sauer’s.}

Beethoven’s gimmick endows the music with remarkable energy. Let’s try to imagine what the music would be like if the right hand played on the beat with the left hand. I’ll sing the beginning for you … {I sing; it’s easy without the gimmick.}.

This is a one-shot gimmick, notable for its shock value. Neither Beethoven nor, I think, any other decent composer, would try to use it again. And it does convey the image of that “girl next door”: the amateur pianist you hear practicing over and over, who never seems to be able to make her hands hit the keyboard at the same time.

* * *

I’m playing these Thomas Sauer performances for you because they are extraordinarily original and memorable. You can’t say enough about the good qualities of Sauer’s playing: He’s wonderfully energetic. He phrases beautifully. His trills are not mechanical in the slightest. He has a light touch that I’m sure you will enjoy, and strength where he chooses to apply it. There’s great variety in his sense of touch: fat notes, thin notes, strings of pearls of notes. Only … only … what a small, light, … preMozartian conception he appears to have of this Beethoven sonata!

You can find many modern recordings of this sonata that pack it with Beethoven’s dramatic power. Some of them go too far with that power. But we’re talking about the Beethoven who broke strings on pianos when he played his own music, a man who was soon to write the Eroica symphony. Thomas Sauer takes the opening movement to an opposite extreme. If he wasn’t such a good pianist, I would tell you that I absolutely hate it! But frankly, I’m spellbound with bemusement. His conception is quite sophisticated, carefully thought out, and supported with every note he plays.

Oh, and what does Sauer do with Beethoven’s gimmick? I can assure you that in the piano score, when the right hand plays before the beat, it is always early by the same amount of time. But not in Sauer’s performance. He plays some of those righthand notes so close to the beat that your ear will be fooled into thinking that he played both hands together. At other times, he slightly exaggerates how early the right hand plays, and he constantly varies the time interval between the two hands in ways that compliment the music, making the gimmick seem more like a deep, sophisticated idea than a mechanical tic.
Please give Thomas Sauer a good listen, and make your own judgment. Here’s a link to a webpage about his performance on this CD:

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2011/June11/Beethoven_Sauer_MS1284.htm

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