Arts: The Exhilaration and Dread of Beethoven?s Sonatas

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Culturebox The Exhilaration and Dread of Beethoven's Sonatas A pianist who's recording all 32 of them on what it's like inside the studio. By Jonathan Biss Posted Friday, Dec 16, 2011, at 08:53 PM ET Editor's note: This is an excerpt from Jonathan Biss' Kindle Single Beethoven's Shadow, available at Amazon.com. The challenge of playing the 32 Beethoven sonatas is often compared to climbing Mount Everest, which conveys the degree but not the breadth of difficulty involved. It is misleading to refer to the sonatas as a "body of music," as they are in fact 32 unique structures, which between them represent an astonishing variety of language and cover more spiritual ground than seems reasonable given that they spring from one man's imagination. Having already learned and performed 18 of them, I still feel each time I begin work on a new one that I am starting from scratch. This feeling—and the exhilaration and dread that accompany it—will be with me frequently over the next nine years, as I have committed myself to recording all 32 sonatas. Beyond the scope and difficulty of the sonatas themselves, the main anxiety to be addressed before I dared to embark on this project had to do with the process of recording. The intensity of this particular anxiety would not be easy to overstate. I once had a conversation with a record executive who told me that if he were a musician, his favorite activity would be recording, as it affords the artist the unparalleled opportunity to experiment; I have yet to meet an artist who feels this way. My own discomfort with the recording process is multifaceted, but much of it boils ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Does Drinking Make You a Better Writer? The Science Behind Hitchens' Theory. Why Midwesterners Are So Proud of the Massive 1811 Earthquake That Rocked America David Corn: What I Learned From Sharing a Tiny Office With Hitchens	Advertisement
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