Beethoven Piano Sonatas: Merkin Hall, New York City

Casting a Fresh Perspective on Beethoven Sonatas
from The New York Times (ALLAN KOZINN) - October 22, 1999

In the late 1980's Robert Taub gave a series of performances of Milton Babbitt's solo piano works, which was so illuminating that a listener came away from his concerts thinking of Babbitt's music in an entirely different way. Taub has not abandoned new music since then, but in recent years he has been spending a lot of time coming to terms with the Beethoven Sonatas.

As with his performance of the Babbitt works, Taub seems not to have just learned the sonatas and played them, but to have examined them inside and out with attention to everything from biographical studies to the way the piano evolved in Beethoven's time. A result has been several concert cycles, including one in Princeton, N.J., where Taub is an artist in residence, as well as a recording of the complete set for the Vox label. Now he is undertaking a Beethoven series at Merkin Concert Hall. The first of three installments was on Wednesday evening.

Taub's format is inviting and not as didactic as a description may make it seem. Before each concert he gives a 30-minute talk about aspects of Beethoven's piano music, illustrated at the piano; after the concerts he takes questions from listeners. Particularly interesting in his Wednesday evening presentation was a discussion of the pedal markings and hand crossing in the Rondo of the "Waldstein" Sonata, and how a performer's reconsidering such details can entirely alter the shape and spirit of Beethoven's phrasing.

In the performance Taub practiced what he preached: no sforzando went by without being resolutely nailed, and other dynamic and phrasing markings were observed with equal scrupulousness. That is not to say that these were rote readings: Taub's ideas about tempos and whether dynamic changes should be stark or subtle gave his performances character and individuality.

His driven account of the Sonata No. 1 in F minor (Op. 2, No. 1), for example, persuasively conveyed the impetuousness of the young Beethoven. In that context, the work's Adagio seemed a fleeting glance back to Mozart.

Taub's selection of works offered a sense of Beethoven's development, as well. Five years separate the F minor Sonata and the Sonata No. 13 in E flat (Op. 27, No. 1), and in juxtaposing them Taub showed how quickly impetuousness developed into high drama.

And in his bracing readings of the Sonata No. 24 in F sharp (Op. 78) and the "Waldstein" (Op. 53), Taub suggested that the comparatively inward-looking drama of the E flat Sonata was transformed into an explosive emotionalism. (The return trip, in Beethoven's transcendent late works, was not touched upon here, but Taub has the Opus 106 and Opus 110 Sonatas scheduled for his concerts on Nov. 3 and 17.)