Canonical games: Playing Beethoven's piano sonatas.
10-CD recording of Beethoven's Sonata cycle.
- Submitting institution
-
The Royal Academy of Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- RAM031
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Duke's Hall, Royal Academy of Music, London
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of first performance
- -
- Year of first performance
- 2015
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This is a large volume of original work.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This recording and accompanying programme note seek to establish a contemporary framework for playing the Beethoven Sonata cycle.
The liner note posits that the canonical status of the cycle itself has left an indelible mark on how we read these works now. The legacy of outstanding musical minds that have engaged with the sonatas is undeniable, but in turn Beethoven’s iconic status has driven a tendency towards monumentalising performance practices and restrictive pedagogical traditions.
These recordings argue that, rather than rejecting the monumentalised view outright or, conversely, rejecting as a chimera efforts to recapture a historically 'authentic' Beethoven, creative performers can claim as their own domain an idiosyncratic survey of the whole gamut of practices that have accrued around Beethoven – evidenced in many writings, but also a hundred years or so of recordings. A personal, craft-oriented engagement that goes far beyond the usual reflexive use of given sets of interpretative or stylistic conventions and simplistic adherence to ‘schools’ of thought can reveal a surprising range of expressive and technical possibilities to assimilate and/or experiment with.
As such this recording seeks to address the challenge of making music now through drawing on a re-imagining of past practices in dialogue with present ones, and testing that against the panoramic range of material contained in the Sonatas.
Through such a process, the performer deals investigatively and critically with the chain of citation around Beethoven as much as he does with the works themselves, the works in turn becoming a lens through which we can engage with many pasts – and our present.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -