From Alex Rosss piece in last weeks issue of the New Yorker: Opus 131, which indeed bears the Baron’s name, is routinely described as Beethoven’s greatest achievement, even as the greatest work ever written. Stravinsky called it “perfect, inevitable, inalterable.” It is a cosmic stream of consciousness in seven sharply contrasted movements, its free-associating structure giving the impression, in the best performances, of a collective improvisation. At the same time, it is underpinned by a developmental logic that surpasses in obsessiveness anything that came before. The first four notes of the otherworldly fugue with which the piece begins undergo continual permutations, some obvious and some subtle to the point of being conspiratorial. youtube/watch?v=Gx2KlpV_ZOk
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 03:34:48 +0000
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