Beethoven, Rhythmic, Full of Energy

By Christoph Keller

Nordwest Zeitung, July 2022

Beethoven’s Sonata, Rhythmic and Full of Energy

Sengwarden – it is almost a matter of course for great pianists, to occupy themselves with entire piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. His 32 piano sonatas represent an entire life-tableau and fill up at least 10 piano solo recitals. One of them has taken place now as a part of the “Musikalischen Sommers in Ostfriesland” in the St. Georgs Church in Sengwarden. The South Korean pianist HieYon Choi interprets the cycle of all sonatas at the summer music festival spread over the individual years. This year’s penultimate evening, brilliantly performed, contains four sonatas, two from the composer’s early creative period, a shorter one from his middle period and his great final C minor sonata.

Diverse sound register

Pianist Hie Yon Choi plays a Beethoven based on strong contrasts. Distinctive accents and different sound registers of the concert grand characterize the sound. The energy with which the artist goes to work is immediately apparent in the early C minor Sonata, Op. 10 No. 1.  The rhythmic conciseness of the first theme with the widely spaced tonal leaps and the rhythmic disruption come into their own. The semiquavers move like floating butterflies in the cantabile second movement, which the pianist creates with wonderful timbres.

The prestissimo of the finale in its development already points to the drama and the themes of the last piano sonata op. 111. In this, HieYon Choi unfolds an impressive world of sound in which the composer’s defiance of the disturbingly described fate becomes all too clear. The polyphonic entanglements of the wild and impetuous first movement reflect this vividly.

Theme unfolds

The pianist plays the tender Arietta from Beethoven’s last sonata movement rather “semplice” and less expressively. In the variations that follow, however, she unfolds this theme with increasing intensity. With the concise rhythmic dotting and the consistently sustained syncopation, the theme of the Arietta undergoes a transformation that increases in the trills and cascades of sound to the point of transcendence, before at the end the composer’s “reunion” sounds several times as a farewell call in the characteristic downward dotted fourth. The audience’s prolonged silence was the best applause for this deeply moving performance.