Word: appassionata
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...opening performance of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata exemplified both virtues and flaws that were to characterize the entire concert. Levy's outstanding asset is a complete immersion in the music. He avoids flashy displays of virtuosity, and through his personal absorption has attained the unique sense of structural exposition required for a meaningful performance. The result last Sunday was a Appassionate delincated by perfectly clear phrasing, logical climaxes, and minute attention to details of rhythm. In addition, it had dramatic sweep and power that could only have arisen, ultimately, from intimate knowledge of the formal elements...
These failings did not badly mar the Appassionata or the closing Beethoven Sonata Op. 111, but they seriously detracted from Brahm's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. This work is rarely performed, partly because of its extreme difficulty and partly because it represents a far more abstract approach than the familiar Variations on a Theme by Paganini. Levy's playing lacked the rhythmic urgency needed to keep the Handel set form foundering, in its own intellectual richness. And a lack of clarity first apparent in the swirling Appassionata finale let Brahms' Fugue become a hodge-podge...
...Naked Heart. The Beethoven of 1809 was 39, and already the famed composer of the mighty "Eroica," the "Moonlight" and "Appassionata" sonatas. He was a self-made man risen from low birth-his father was a drunken court musician in Bonn-to lofty republican ideals. He was also a man tortured by a bad stomach and that most "terrible affliction" of a musician, deafness. The deafness left its mark early. At 31 he confided in letters to a friend: "I fled from men, had to appear a misanthropist, though I am far from being one ... I scarcely hear those...
Beethoven's "Waldstein" and "Appassionata" Sonatas are two of those pieces which every pianist plays, but few can play well. Paul Knudson '53, tried them both last night, with only moderate success...
...Appassionata" fared somewhat better. Knudson played with more poise, but here too the melodic lines lacked clarity and dynamic articulation. His performance of the second movement did not seem well integrated; the simple main theme and its variations are supposed to be closely-knit, but the young pianist's episodic treatment destroyed most of this unity...