Recording of the Week, Chopin and Beethoven from Beatrice Rana

A diptych of mighty piano sonatas forms today’s Recording of the Week - Beatrice Rana juxtaposing Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 with Beethoven’s Hammerklavier. It’s a curious pairing, not often encountered, but Rana makes a compelling case for the parallels between these two pieces.

The first thing that leaps out in her Chopin - other than the ingenious use of a split second of pedal to create a cunning forte-piano effect on the first note of the doppio movimento - is her restraint. The forte at the lyrical second subject, as elsewhere, is relatively light; Rana almost never actually hammers the klavier, with even fortissimo passages being intelligently contextualised (sometimes with two-bar alternations between louder and quieter) rather than presented as walls of sound.

Many pianists are understandably seduced by the soaring melodies in this first movement, which at times seem to prefigure Rachmaninoff’s concerti and are often played accordingly, but Rana isn’t falling for it. None of the climactic moments in the first movement feel overpowering. It’s an almost Mozartian approach to Chopin where less is definitely more - the occasional glimpses of real power are all the more powerful for being so rare.

The Funeral March movement, so often approached with a sense of foreboding intensity, here strikes a far less grandiose tone - not so much a heroic sendoff for a fallen Siegfried but something much more subdued, straightforwardly sad rather than pompously funereal. Even the turn to D flat major (so often played as a moment of triumph) has more of a wistful air about it. At times the mood is almost ethereal - the pianissimo lyrical section is a true pianissimo throughout, defying the temptation to make more of such a beautiful passage. The effect of this simple, innocent melody when combined with Rana’s generous use of pedal is deeply nostalgic, like a distant memory, even verging on the eerie at times - calling to mind the well-worn trope of an echo-y children’s music box in horror films. 

Rana commented when I spoke to her recently (keep an eye out for that interview on the Presto site in the coming days!) that while Chopin is ‘contemplating solitude, and is completely scared by it’ - a sensation that is particularly strong in her performance of the middle section of the Funeral March - Beethoven is, characteristically, asserting himself against similar feelings of isolation, and that sense of self-assertion permeates her account of the Hammerklavier, perhaps reflecting in part her having learned it during Covid-induced periods of lockdown.

Here, where it belongs, is all the steel that was largely kept out of the Chopin. The physicality of the music is palpable, especially during the passages in the development where phrases begin with widely-spaced sforzandi comprising a bass octave and a chord up near the top of the keyboard. Given that the Hammerklavier was pushing at the limits of what keyboard instruments of Beethoven’s time could cope with, I always feel like these climactic chords should give a sense of the frame shaking with the impact, and Rana conjures that feeling up admirably.

The similarities with Chopin are perhaps strongest in the monumental, profound slow movement, despite all the differences between this extended lament and Chopin’s funeral march. Again Rana deploys her restrained pianissimo to wonderful effect, especially in the brief glimmers of light in G major early in the movement.

Only the Fugue remains - a final ascent and a crowning test of the pianist’s agility and raw stamina. Rana leaps right off at a fearlessly ambitious tempo, significantly faster and more energetic than some other acclaimed recordings. Listening to the notes flying past as Beethoven flexes his contrapuntal muscles (the deliberately odd-sounding retrograde appearance of the cascading subject from bar 170 onward is one of my favourite passages), it’s hard to imagine that in Beethoven’s time the Hammerklavier was considered virtually unplayable. 

It would be difficult to find more convincing, more thoroughly thought-out, and more exquisitely performed accounts of these two sonatas. Levit, Perahia and others will still be the go-to Hammerklaviers for some people, and that’s fine - but for me, Rana’s combination of sensitive Chopin and barnstorming Beethoven puts this album in a league of its own.