I Listened To The Same 3 Notes. In 51 Recordings. (Bernstein, O'Conor, Richter, Uchida, 조성진, et al)

The last three piano sonatas of Beethoven, written just a few years before his death, are full of profound moments that one could obsess about for lifetimes. Gosh, I mean, there's everything in them. I think there is moments that that he looks back to when when life could have been good. I learned Opus 110, his penultimate sonata a few years ago. I basically just intuitively followed the score the best that I could. I took advice from lessons and master classes and put it all together to come up

with my interpretation at the time. But since then I have become increasingly fixated on the three ambiguous notes in the third movement. I'm convinced that inside of these three notes, we can learn so much about how pianists approach this piece as a whole. So in order to crack the code of these mysterious three notes, I did what any proper investigator would do. I decided to compare 51 different recordings using a little chart. It turns out that listening to so many recordings ended up reveali

ng more questions than answers. But before we keep going, I want to give you a quick reminder just to click that little subscribe button and to be sure to like and share this video. So back to those three notes in the edition that I use, which is the Henle Urtext addition. Those three notes appear at the end of bar five in the third movement. The way they're printed, it makes it look like they're 3 eighth notes, just like the 4 eighth notes preceding them, which theoretically means that they sho

uld be played with the same kind of rhythmic feel, more or less to those four notes. However, many pianists play it as a triplet, probably because of the two slurs, the staccato marking, and of course, the cantabile which asks for a kind of recitativo freedom. Not to mention the fact that several other editions, including the Schenker Edition, do have it marked as a triplet. Usually when we encounter an ambiguous moment in a piece of music, it's a good idea to go back to some of the original man

uscripts or original documents to see if what the composer wrote is lining up with what modern publications are showing. But with Opus 110, that's a little bit of a problem because there were at least seven different notable sources that add up to what we have today of the piece, and they span a long period of time from 1821 to 1822. Not only is this quite significantly more sources than most of Beethoven's other pieces, but he also edited and changed the piece quite a lot during that process. I

n spite of all of that, though, there's not really that much scholarly literature that is referring to these three notes in particular. So since I couldn't find answers there, I decided to turn to the great catalog of recordings of this piece to see what I could find to conduct my research. I collected 51 different recordings from 49 pianists from all over the world, all different kinds of playing styles from live studio and competition recordings from 1932 to the present day, with even a few on

Fortepiano. I also went back and listened to the old recording of myself playing this from a few years ago to see what I did before this became a personal obsession of mine. By the way, if you or someone you love is as obsessed with the tiny details of piano playing as I am or is curious about becoming so I highly recommend checking out Tonebase Premium where you can find content on Beethoven, Chopin, and many other composers. With lessons from Norman Krieger, John O'Conor, Seymour Bernstein, a

nd tons more giving you their insights on some of the most interesting and most illuminating topics of piano playing. Be sure to check out the link in the description below or right up here for more information. So now I would like to share with you the results of my highly scientific research. Basically, I determined that most pianists play this piece either in clear triplets, clear eighth notes, or with a rubato that puts them somewhere in the middle. There were also a few examples that I list

ened to that I would say exist completely outside of this spectrum. Playing three notes as a triplet was by far the most popular option, with a wide range of pianists using it. I'm going to also include Volodos in this category, both like a little asterisk because he plays it not as a triplet of eighth notes, but rather twice as fast as a triplet of 16th notes. A smaller but quite *star-studded* group of pianists plays these three notes as strict eighth notes. This includes piano such as Neuhaus

, Pollini, Richter and Uchida. Next there are the pianists who play it somewhere in the middle. In general, these pianists are playing it kind of like eighth notes, but with a little bit of an accelerando. to the downbeat. I also, when I was listening to my old recording, played it this way as well. Finally, there was a group of pianists who played these somewhere completely out in a different universe, for example, Cortot plays it quite quickly but lingers on the second of the three last notes

and Lubimov playing on the fortepiano does something really interesting with rubato that's quite hard to describe. You should just listen to it. While I was going through the research. I kept track of the date and the country of origin of all of the pianists just to see if there was any unifying factor that led certain people to play it one way or the other. And ultimately, there really wasn't anything of statistical significance to share on that. Basically, it really just came down to the indiv

idual pianist and how they approached the piece as a whole. The triplet method creates this kind of singing momentum to the downbeat, while the eighth note method really leans into the cantabile. Something I really appreciate about the rubato method is that it creates an interesting parallel between those last three notes and the similar motif figure in the next measure. Inevitably, then, this listening project spiraled out of control and became quite a lot about how the pianists play. The rest

of this measure leading up to these three notes, how they played out, repeating a figure that is so full of emotion, some like Kissin and made it a very dramatic statement, whereas for others it was more internal, more personal, more intimate. One quick side note that I found really interesting is that one of my favorite pianists, Maria João Pires, plays these in a way that no other pianist I listened to does and in a way that I could not find in any literature or any other edition, where instea

d of playing repeated A's, she actually alternates between a and the octave above. And then, of course, I started thinking about how pianists are playing the rest of this piece, what kind of tone color they give to the opening chorale, how fast exactly they play the scherzo, and what kind of character they bring into the fugue. I once read that Menahem Pressler in a master class, was recalling something that his teacher had said about the Opus 110 Sonata. He said that this sonata really represen

ts Beethoven, the man in every respect in all parts of his life. It's no wonder so many pianists have recorded and wanted to record this piece. It provides so much space for personal, expressive freedom. So you're probably asking yourself, what is the point of all of this? Well, listening to all these pianists playing really reminded me how important it is to push yourself outside of your comfort zone when you're practicing and to experiment with things that are a little bit beyond your intuitio

n. Knowing that so many pianists throughout history have looked at the exact same notes on the same paper and decided to play it and so many subtly different ways made me really feel like there was such a wide spectrum of possibilities that I wasn't even considering. Just because I was so caught up in what I was doing myself. It's also really humanizing to imagine Beethoven actually struggling himself to finish this piece, to get every detail just right. How do you turn on your own imagination?

How to make change? It's all about being able to do things more than one way. Music is just food for the soul. Thank you all so much for following me down the rabbit hole with my personal obsession with this passage. I am really curious which of these recordings is your favorite? How do you think it should be played and what little tiny detail of piano repertoire are you obsessing about lately? Go ahead and sound off in the comments and let me know what you're thinking about. Also, just a quick

reminder to like and subscribe. And also to check out Tonebase Premium, where you can explore the entire library of super informative content on Beethoven and many other lovely topics of piano. I'm Robert Fleitz from Tonebase, and I want to thank you all for joining me today. See you next time.