Ears tuned up and waiting! :-)
His opera “Leonora” went through three failed iterations before the soprano who played the title role, Anna Milder, sat Beethoven down with a blue pencil and mercilessly hacked away at the score. Lou was prickly about criticism of his music, but Anna had been in the opera house since her childhood and understood that Lou’s opera needed a good trim. When she and Lou were finished, the opera, now re-titled “Fidelio”, was a hit.
Lou composed symphonies, and that was where most of his energies went. His deafness was slowly increasing. The death of his brother and the custody battle over his nephew Karl was beginning to take a toll on his musical life.
In 1814, at age 44, Beethoven went back to the sonata and wrote a little two-movement piece.
There is an anecdote about this sonata that is fascinating. Later in the century, the great Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein made this one of his signature pieces. It was said that he could draw the most beautiful emotions out of the rondo finale.
In the early 20th Century, decades after Rubinstein’s death, one of his female students had as one of her female students a teenage pianist who later went on to acclaim. (I’m blanking out on her name unfortunately.) When the teenager played this sonata in concert, as she sat down at the piano, she blacked out, and when she regained consciousness, the audience was on its feet applauding wildly, cheering, and many had their handkerchiefs out. The teenage pianist staggered offstage and found her teacher shivering in the wings. “Child,” the teacher said, “if I hadn’t seen you at the piano with my own eyes, I would have sworn it was Rubinstein playing.”
(cue the “Twilight Zone” theme)
The Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 90, has German, rather than Italian directions. The first movement in 3/4 is marked mit lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit Empfindung und Ausdruck, which translates to “with liveliness and feeling and expression throughout”. Lou uses his stop-and-start mechanism to drive the movement, and the first subject is harmonically unstable, shifting in and out of remote keys. When he launches into the second subject in B minor backed by 16th notes in the right hand, the theme is on the off-beats.
Lou does not repeat the exposition but drives right into the development at 2:00. He starts with the second subject and works his way back to the first, ending it with counterpoint.
At 3:14, he recaps and places his second subject in the correct key of E minor. He ends it slowly and quietly.
The finale in 2/4 and E Major is marked nicht zo geschwind und sehr singbar vorgetragen, which translates as “not too quickly and conveyed in a singing manner”. It’s a song in rondo format, and it’s best to lay back and roll with it. I love the way it just evaporates at the end.
Beethoven: Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 90
I have a special treat for those who want to probe this piece more deeply. The great pianist Andras Schiff gave a master class in England on the piece, taking it apart bar by bar.
Andras Schiff explains Beethoven’s Opus 90
The Notorious B.I.G. wrote an incredibly obscene hip-hop number to the finale of this sonata, which I will not link to because I don’t want to get banned! If you’re sufficiently curious, look up this sonata at YouTube, and you’ll find it. You may wish you hadn’t. A shower afterward might be in order.