A MEETING AT THE CROSSROADS

For violinist Rachel Podger and pianist Christopher Glynn, recording Beethoven’s violin sonatas, which occupy the stormy transitional period between Classicism and Romanticism, brought together their disparate musical specialisms, as they tell Harry White

Despite completing nine sonatas for violin and piano by 1803, before he’d turned 33, Beethoven did not write his final offering in the genre – the elliptical op.96 – until 1812. Between an early, compressed fever of productivity and this, the last vestige of the composer’s ‘middle period’, Beethoven had risen from restless Classicism through titanic heroism and towards the more profound musical utterances that were to define his final years. Yet the ten violin sonatas that bookend this evolution remain a coherent collection, unified by Beethoven’s desire to create what was later described by music critic and writer Louis Biancolli as ‘a colloquy of reciprocal enrichment’.

‘So much of Beethoven’s musical language is still shocking to us today, even though we’re familiar with contemporary music and have probably been shocked many times since,’ says Rachel Podger, who has recorded sonatas nos.1, 5 and 10 with pianist Christopher Glynn. ‘It shocks because Beethoven’s musical language is embedded in the Classical style of his time (however Romantic it might sound), and his spirit of adventure and daring to push the boundaries of this style makes his music sound and feel fresh and revolutionary, even two centuries later.’

Glynn believes it is this constant quest for new horizons that makes Beethoven such an enduring composer for recording artists, even today. ‘The level of his innovation and the sheer greatness of his achievements mean that there’s so much to find for musicians,’ he says. ‘It’s a never-ending journey.’

PHOTOS ANDREW WILKINSON

‘I CAN IMAGINE BEETHOVEN SHOUTING, FROWNING AND CURSING AS WELL AS THEN BEING AT ONE WITH NATURE AND GOD’

Recording Beethoven symbolises a meeting in the middle for both musicians. For Podger, it is a shift forwards from her established repertoire of the Baroque, galant and early Classical periods, while for Glynn, it’s something of a backward glance from the later Romanticism of Schubert and beyond, where he has been most at home.

‘I like to think of musical styles as different languages, with their differing vocabulary and grammar, nationalities, dialects, accents and habits,’ says Podger. ‘I find it fascinating to play Beethoven after having pretty much only lived with and around earlier music. What I’ve enjoyed so much is finding the places where he’s being an 18th-and early 19th-century artist, and where and how he breaks free of those shackles. Put that sense of daring together with a violin with gut strings and a classical bow, and I’m in a musical world where every phrase jumps off the page in a vivid and compelling way. I can imagine Beethoven shouting, frowning and cursing as well as then being at one with nature and God, and hence being himself. When Chris and I first played Beethoven together we were coming from slightly different angles, yes, but there was immediately plenty of common ground in our music making. When some differences needed working out, for instance things to do with tempo or rubato or rhetorical aspects of a figure or harmony, it was interesting to discuss them and work them out together. It clarified some assumed practices for both of us, and encouraged critical thinking and not taking anything for granted.’

This sense of partnership is crucial in a triptych of works that build fully on Mozart’s developments in raising the violin from being a subservient voice to having greater parity with the keyboard. ‘We first started playing together three years ago and, like all performing partnerships, have grown through rehearsal, discussion and, most of all, doing concerts,’ says Glynn. ‘Together, we’ve put a lot of thought and time into this record, and that is important because these chamber works involve a level of intricate instrumental dialogue that frankly no composer had got near before, and which became a continual reference point for later composers.’

Podger adds: ‘When playing the violin parts in these three sonatas, it does feel like being part of a team. Although Beethoven was primarily a pianist, he was also a violinist, and it’s clear he understood both instruments from the inside out. He seems to be setting himself the challenge of combining his own expressive, dramatic and possibly rough at times piano playing style with the new, in-vogue expressive style of string playing. But however difficult the violin part gets, it does seem to me that the pianist has so much more to deal with, technically but also musically. The violin parts have tricky bits too, of course, but once you are used to Beethoven’s surprising and sudden changes of dynamic, his unpredictable turns of phrase and the scale of different expressions inherent in his music, his writing actually feels idiomatic to play, and often more so than Mozart’s.’

Both musicians borrowed from the instrumental collection of London’s Royal Academy of Music for the album. Podger plays on the 1718 ‘Maurin’ Stradivari, and Glynn on an 1840 Érard. ‘Barbara Meyer, curator of instruments at the RAM, made a number of adjustments to the set-up to bring it as close as possible to that of a late 18th-or early 19th-century instrument,’ explains Podger. ‘Although opening up the instrument and changing the angle of the neck was not on the cards, the “Maurin” had to get used to a lower saddle, a Classical-style tailpiece and bridge, a tailgut and gut strings. It didn’t complain at all, and in fact was very easy-going about these changes. I loved playing it, and it in turn gave me some lovely warm sounds and plenty of colours to enjoy!’

For Glynn, the Érard instrument shone new light on the repertoire. ‘One of the things you find on these early pianos is that instead of having a homogeneous sound across the keyboard, there’s a real sense of differing registers and colours. Suddenly, the minute you play music from the late 18th and early 19th centuries it begins to make sense. Another aspect is that the bass is much less thick, so suddenly those quite fully written chords of Beethoven become contextualised, and the lighter touch enables real attention to detail on all those articulation markings within the score. In this case, it was very much that the instruments were informing us as to how to play the music, giving a fresh perspective on the repertoire.’

Rachel Podger and Christopher Glynn recording at St John the Evangelist in London

What do both artists hope to add to the canon of recordings of these well-trodden works? ‘For me, there was a real sense of spontaneity to the process of recording them,’ says Glynn. ‘And, within this, a bringing-out of humour and light that can become submerged beneath the greatness of Beethoven’s music.’ And Podger? ‘Recording famous and well-known repertoire is always a big deal,’ she says, ‘which in fact I try not to think about too much. For me, it’s about the exploration of this music from a particular angle, trying to get as close as I can to show its extreme beauty, rawness and drama.’

WORKS Beethoven: Violin Sonatas: no.1 in D major op.12 no.1, no.5 in F major op.24 ‘Spring’, no.10 in G major op.96