Interpreting Late Beethoven

[leo_t7]

Hi,

Lately, I have become very interested in the late Beethoven sonatas. I have heard of their immense difficulty both technically and musically, but am interested in this thread more with their musical aspects. I have been poking around for what specifically makes them musically challenging, and all I have come across is that they are "mature". Would someone provide some background for me as to what musically makes them distinctive from some of his other sonatas, elaborate on the meaning of mature in terms the late sonatas, and what it takes to interpret and perform them well?

[brogers70]

That question is worth a book, not a post. Here are a few ideas.

Differences from the earlier sonatas. This is not black and white, but I think that in the later sonatas, sonata form becomes less common and less important and fugues and theme and variations more important. It seems to me that in the earlier sonatas one thing that Beethoven found interesting about sonata form was large scale harmonic motion - how far away from the tonic could he go and how cleverly could he get back there in the recapitulation? What alternative tonalities could he substitute for the subdominant and tonic in sections of the exposition and development? And also, how much dramatic or humorous contrast could he make between different themes. What holds these movements together is first the form itself with a dramatic pull back towards the tonic and the recapitulation, and, second, the use of melodic or rhythmic motifs.

In the later sonatas, sonata form is less important. Fugue and theme and variations have in common that there is an obvious single theme that ties everything in the movement together, more tightly than is the case in sonata form. The limitation, though, is that both forms can seem pretty academic, just vehicles for technical display. In the late sonatas Beethoven managed to give big dramatic arcs to both potentially dry forms. At the same time, in the later sonatas (and quartets) there is a tendency for things to seem very disjointed, sudden changes in tempo, fragments of movements seemingly stuck together at random. So on the one hand there are forms, fugue and theme and variations, that work in favor of unity and on the other there is this collage effect of multiple different fragments stuck together that seems to work against it.  So, for me, a good interpretation of these sonatas is one that manages to maintain a single dramatic arc throughout  the performance,  helped by the fugue or theme and variations form, and in spite of sudden changes of gear from section to section.

You must have listened to a bunch of different interpretations of them. What do you think is special about the ones you like best?