A slappin’ gonna happen?
:-)
On occasion, Beethoven liked to write something for sheer fun. This piece isn’t deep, but it’s a blast to listen to. When it’s programmed at a chamber music festival, it fills the hall. He wrote it in 1798 at age 27, and it was an immediate success.
The first movement, marked with his favorite “allegro con brio”, is in sonata format, and the transition between the first and second subjects goes into a remote key in a deep moment. The exposition is repeated. At 5:48 Lou starts his development with the same remote key that he uses for the transitional passage. At 7:10 he recaps. The coda goes into sudden death overtime, and Lou ends it abruptly but with a smile.
The slow movement, marked simply “adagio”, is in E-flat and is one of his great, beautiful love songs. His middle section turns to a dark E-flat minor before the sun comes out again.
Lou wrote a lot of theme-and-variation movements based on his own themes, but he loved taking themes by others that were musical trash and turning them into gold, and the trashier the better. He would write variations on street songs, barroom songs and insignificant little ditties from insignificant operas written by insignificant contemporary composers. It was as though he were saying, as Handel often did, “That tune was too good for him.” In this case he took a little number from a totally forgettable opera by the totally forgettable Joseph Weigl and turned it into a classic.
It’s marked “allegretto”, and Beethoven shows his chops as both a composer and a pianist. The opening theme from Weigl is stated plainly but with humor.
Lou quickly plunges into Variation #1 with the piano playing arpeggios around the theme while the clarinet and cello sit and watch. He wrote this one for himself.
Variation #2 has the cello and clarinet working the variation while the pianist takes a break to rest his fingers.
Variation #3 features the clarinet breaking out into song while the piano accompanies. (This is my favorite variation.) The cello joins the fun and works the theme in tandem with the clarinet.
Variation #4 is the obligatory minor key variation, this time in B-fat minor, one of Beethoven’s “dark” keys.
Variation #5 features the clarinet breaking into song while the piano plays arpeggios around him. Then the cellist joins the fun.
Variation #6 breaks the theme into pieces with the instruments echoing playful phrases off each other.
Variation #7 goes into the minor again with the piano taking the lead.
Variation #8 is a gift for the cello with the others following her.
Variation #9 sounds like a test run for “When the Saints Go Marching In”.
Beethoven executes a Neapolitan trill – that is, one half-tone up – and the audience laughs because they know Lou is about to pull their musical leg. He uses a fermata to signal the pianist to improvise a cadenza, which he does in the same style as Lou’s humor. This leads to Variation #10 in triple time in the style of Mozart where the piano starts off, and then everybody just goes with it. The ending returns to duple time, and he wraps it up hilariously. This is why people pack the hall.
Tomorrow night it’s the first of the Opus 12 violin sonatas.