Classic – trapezoid without a network

Compared to Beethoven’s symphonies, its 32 piano sonatas or the string quartets, the ten violin sonatas of the master lead a shadowy existence. Sure, the “Kreutzer” sonata op. 47 can be heard regularly, occasionally the “spring” sonata op. 24. But there is not a tenth of the recordings of the piano sonatas, and they are very rare in the concert.

It is all the greater the joy that Antje Weithaas, Berlin soloist and professor at the Hanns-Eisler music academy, the ten violin sonatas, which she has recorded with her congenial piano partner Dénes Várjon in the past two years, now also presented live in Berlin’s most beautiful space for chamber music, the Pierre-Boulez-Saal.

Nine of his ten violin sonatas wrote Beethoven in a relatively short period of time, between 1797 and 1803, the tenth was created in 1812. So it is not that this setting has been working for his life or at least accompanied it, as was the case with the piano sonatas or the string quartets. And yet in the only five years from the first to the “Kreutzer” sonata, an immense compositional development can be viewed. The sonatas are all referred to as the piano sonatas “with” a violin, but as with Mozart’s violin sonatas, which Beethoven had already met in his Bonn years, this is about a dialogical exchange of piano and violin-and in the title of the “Kreutzer” sonata, the violin is then as “obligatory”, i.e. indispensable.

Beethoven appreciated the French violinist and composer Rodolphe Kreutzer, who was one of the independent composers with Cherubini, Gosseec or Méhul, who took part in the French Revolution and contributed to the blossom of French revolutionary music from 1789 to 1794, which was spread through the printed magazines of the new Parisian State publisher all over Europe.

Beethoven has repeatedly cited French revolutionary hymns or marches in his works. Between the topic of Beethoven’s first symphony and the “Marathon”-Uverture Kreutzers, which was contained in the 9th edition of the Paris “Magasin de Musique”, there is, for example, an “evident” similarity “in melodic and rhythmic relationship, in the signal character and in the repetition of the main phrase on the second stage (Arnold Schmitz).

Quite sure: Kreutzer, this “good dear person”, had “dug deep into his heart”, as Beethoven wrote in two letters. Alone, premiered, the famous violin sonata A major op. 47 (with the master at the piano) in May 1803 The 24-year-old 24-year-old Briton George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, which was famous for his “extravagant game”, one of the most famous violinists of his time, whose father came from the Caribbean, the mother from Poland. Beethoven referred to the work on the autograph as “Sonata Mulattica”. It was only when the two musicians flattened for private reasons that Beethoven devoted the Rodolphe Kreutzer work.

“Sonata Mulattica” – not a bad name for this wild, all dimensions of brave work, a composition of “multiplicity”, as the Kant revered by Beethoven and a good two centuries later the Caribbean philosopher Édouard Glissant.

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In the big first sentence, which is unusual with a solo of the violin, we experience a division of the large implementation as in the “Eroica”, the “Appassionata”, the Waldstein sonata, but also in the ninth symphony. Always when Beethoven composed such a division of implementation, its first part was “more silent, fantasizing”, the second, on the other hand, “built, objectified”, but above all always with the “turn: now: now should It was «. In the Kreutzer sonata, this turn consists of a third dramatic, marshal topic-Beethoven wrestles for ideas for new truths, and so he breaks the traditional forms that are no longer sufficient for what is to be said.

Basically, it is no wonder that these sonata studied Beethoven’s contemporaries or at least overwhelmed. In August von Kotzebues conservative postille “the freedom” the work is torn: “The composition was bright, and the pursuit of confidentiality and originality driven as far as possible: a fashion that (…) is never satisfied with.” The reviewer of the “general musical newspaper” is even more difficult to appreciate with the sonata: ” have been biased by aesthetic or artistic terrorism. “Even dedication carriers Rodolphe Kreutzer described the work as” insulting incomprehensible “.

You can consider the Kreutzer sonata as a kind of chamber music counterpart to the third symphony, which was also completed in 1803, the “Eroica”, such as its extreme extent and virtuosity, but also its construction. No coincidence that, according to Adorno, the tragic succeed topic of the first sentence has a similarity to that in the “Eroica”: “Fulfillment and at the same time: Now there is no stopping.”

This applies not least to the final sentence, a crazy, virtuoso Tarantella, whose brilliant gesture alone is the addition “Scritta in Uno Stilo Molto Concertante” justifies, “written in an extremely concerting style”, which Beethoven gave to his work. The Kreutzer sonata is in each of its three sentences, in all its 40 minutes of tremendous boldness and expressiveness. One actually at all levels Radicals Work.

To date, only a few violins of this radicality really do justice. Anyone who plays the Kreutzer sonata, even performs them publicly, goes to a tightrope walk, on the trapeze without any network. In this respect, Antje Weithaas is the born ideal interpreter of this work: she can get into the composition entirely with all fibers in her game. In every interpretation she goes all over. There is no trace of chamber music Biedersinn, as you had to experience him a few years ago when Julia Fischer and Igor Levit appeared in the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Antje Weithaas and Dénes Várjon demand everything, but also Beethoven’s sonatas, the audience. Where it is necessary, the two act almost daring, but without neglecting the intermediate tones. You can hear, for example, how unique she takes the long entrance to the “spring” sonata op. 24 (the title “spring” does not come from Beethoven as little as that of the “moonlight” sonata).

There is a high level of great stars in the concert. For those who cannot be there, the recording with the “Year 2024 of the German record criticism” offers an outstanding replacement.

Antje Weithaas and Várjon: »Beethoven – William Sonatas, 4 CDs
Live in the Pierre-Boulez-Saal, Berlin: 29, 30th and 31.5.