Why are all mentioning Tchaikovsky? i dont get it ;/?
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"All" are not - only three have done so far - and now a fourth, I'm afraid. What makes it stand out as the let-down that I've always found it to be is that it falls so far short of the expectations that Tchaikovsky has set up for us in much of the remainder of his output (parts of the first three symphonies perhaps excepted); his achievement in a life of just half a century is astonishing, excelling as he did in chamber music, piano music (the sonata excepted), songs, opera, ballet and orchestral music to such an extent that he rarely wrote below his very remarkable best. His inexhaustible melodic invention alone must have been the envy of many of his contemporaries.
You don't get it? Well, I don't get that sonata either(!); it seems as though the composer was just going through the motions of writing a piano sonata as though out of some sense of duty or obligation and I find it disappointingly flaccid, lifeless and unengaging compared to most of the rest of what he wrote - and it's certainly not as though he couldn't handle the piano, as his concertos, miniature solo pieces, songs and piano trio demonstrate. The trio especially is a piece that I'd warmly recommend to anyone getting to know the composer's work, since it embraces so much of what he was about; it contains symphonic thinking, nods towards his work for the operatic and ballet stage and a persistent sense of vocal line and is perhaps one of his most ambitious works of all, its two movements running to almost 50 minutes if played without any cuts.
I have quite abit of trouble with Schubert and much of the music in his piano sonatas - even the late ones - leaves me cold and sounds all too effortful, despite my having heard a number of performances of them that are considered to be benchmarks in this repertoire. I believe that Schubert and his work suffered rather too often from his habit of simply writing too much and it is curious to me that he really seemed to be getting going in his final couple of years or so when he made a more detailed study of counterpoint and cut back on the sheer quantity of music that he was writing; even had he only lived as long as Chopin, I think that our view of him today would be quite different as a consequence of a further decade of composition.
The Berg Sonata "boring"? I surely didn't read that?!...
Lest anyone think that I'm allying myself with those who find Tchaikovsky's piano sonata and some of Schubert's piano sonatas "boring", here's another candidate - the first piano sonata of Szymanowski. OK, it's an early piece, but try comparing it to his other two piano sonatas and the sheer threadbareness and effortfulness will soon make its uncomfortable presence felt; all three of his piano sonatas end with fugues - the latter two quirkily brilliant and exciting and the first one utterly tiresome and uninspired. In that first sonata there's barely a shred of evidence of the splendid composer that Szymanowski was to become.
Best,
Alistair
Topic: "Boring" Sonata by a Great Composer?