Elisabeth Leonskaja | Beethoven

It took nothing less than Elisabeth Leonskaja's depth and poetry to perform in a single recital the three abysses of musical thought that are Beethoven's last Sonatas. A recapitulation, a 'farewell to the sonata' according to Thomas Mann, but also a daunting prophecy...

As we know, Beethoven's late period is a veritable aesthetic myth, analysed by Theodor Adorno and Edward Saïd, among others. Definitely walled in by deafness, the composer is said to have developed a language full of tensions, contradictions and violence, but also of ethereal decantations, inaudible to his contemporaries but heralding almost a hundred years of music. The last String Quartets, the Diabelli Variations and the last Piano Sonatas form the core of this intimidating "late style", sometimes chaotic, sometimes radiant, but always intensely speculative. The Sonata Op. 109 (1820) is striking for its density and the sumptuousness of the Finale with variations, whose admirable theme sparkles and fragments endlessly. Introspective and with great freedom of form, the Sonata Op. 110 (1821) represents a struggle with pain and, with its fugue, bears witness to Beethoven's masterly struggle with the spirit of counterpoint. As for the Sonata op. 111 (1821), with its two movements as if cut off from the world and its legendary "Arietta", its testamentary depth immerses us in a pure universe of sound.