One composer. Ten sonatas. Three concerts.
That's what the St. Andrew's Bach Society is undertaking in the next week as it hosts pianist Paula Fan and violinist Steven Moeckel in a series of concerts covering Beethoven's complete sonata cycle.
As far as anyone can recall, this is the first time in Tucson that the composer's complete cycle has been played in one series.
"This is our Mount Everest," Fan said this week.
"The original title of these sonatas is sonata for piano and violin, not violin and piano," Moeckel said. "The amount of notes that Paula is having to learn is just stupendous."
For the past year, Fan and Moeckel, longtime duet partners and recording collaborators, have been performing the sonatas in recitals to prepare for next week's series.
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Before signing on to do "Beethoven & the Journey to Romanticism: The 10 Violin Sonatas," Moeckel had performed only six of the works in concert. He had never played the famous "Kreutzer" (No. 9 Sonata), or the equally famous "Spring" (No. 5). He also had never tackled No. 2 "because it's so Mozartean. It just wasn't what I felt was Beethoven."
He discovered he was "very much mistaken."
"When Paula and I read that sonata and we got to the slow movement, we were both just astounded," he recalled. "It was so exciting to discover that slow movement. It was a revelation. It had so much of Haydn's humor, and the last movement sounds like Schubert. It's this beautiful, beautiful sense of harmony. So simple and yet so profound in its construction. And the slow movement is basically like a lost Mozart aria out of 'The Marriage of Figaro,' this beautiful love song."
Performing the complete Beethoven sonatas was Moeckel's idea. He proposed it casually to Bach Society Artistic Director Lindabeth Binkley, a former associate at the TSO. (An oboist, she is taking a leave this season from the TSO to teach at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant.)
Binkley took him seriously even as he questioned whether anyone would sit through three concerts of Beethoven.
The purpose of Binkley's group is to give musicians an outlet to perform music that moves them. Moeckel's idea was perfect.
Moeckel said the concert is as much a showcase for Fan, who teaches at the University of Arizona and is the TSO's principal keyboardist, as for him.
"In Beethoven's time, the piano was still the main instrument. And it's all about the dialogue," he said. "I really encourage people when they are listening to really pay attention to who's important when."
Violin Sonata No. 1 in D major, Op. 12, No. 1
Estimated running time: 18 min.
Year composed: 1798
Moeckel's take: "It was early. He was young. Already there was the typical Beethoven where he liked to disturb his own phrases. Very, very classical, but yet with that core of his seriousness already there."
Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 12, No. 2
Estimated running time: 17 min.
Year composed: 1798
Moeckel's take: "It starts out and you think you're listening to Mozart. The slow movement, Beethoven starts really delving into the inkling of the torment of what his life became about — the deafness, the lack of companionship as far as marriage. . . . The last movement will remind you of Schubert and this sense of really still at peace."
Violin Sonata No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 12, No. 3
Estimated running time: 16 min.
Year composed: 1798
Moeckel's take: "It starts getting more involved. . . . Once again, the slow movement of the Third, which he composes in C major, is one of the most beautiful movements out of all of the 10 (sonatas)."
Violin Sonata No. 4 in A minor, Op. 23
Estimated running time: 18 min.
Year composed: 1801
Moeckel's take: "It starts out and it's powerful, very serious, almost nagging. It's a lot of accents. . . . It's already got a bit of anger in it. It was getting harder for him to hear and have conversations, and as a result he spoke very loudly. You get this sense of angst, but yet the second movement again he writes in A major. So the corner movements of that are this shaking his fist or banging the piano, and then the middle movement is this A major, kind of light, creating that diversity in the sonata."
Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Op. 24, "Spring"
Estimated running time: 13 min.
Year composed: 1801
Moeckel's take: "Light, maybe a bit carefree. It's kind of this sense of the calm after the storm. All the movements are very beautiful but almost just very simple. — although nothing Beethoven writes is simple."
Violin Sonata No. 6 in A major, Op. 30, No. 1
Estimated running time: 22 min.
Year composed: 1803
Moeckel's take: "It's one of the ones I've never done. Truthfully, Paula and I are still figuring it out. . . . There's a lot of diversity, a lot of dynamics."
Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2
Estimated running time: 19 min.
Year composed: 1803
Moeckel's take: "I think it's my favorite. . . . The entire sonata has this unbelievable sense of extreme virtuosity."
Violin Sonata No. 8 in G major, Op. 30, No. 3
Estimated running time: 14 min.
Year composed: 1803
Moeckel's take: "It's kind of a showoff. A lot of runs in the piano. The last movement is kind of playful. There's not really a slow movement in this sonata. There's sort of a minuet tempo, so he doesn't get too serious with it, especially in contrast with the C minor. It shows off the ensemble of the piano and violin a lot."
Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Op. 47, "Kreutzer"
Estimated running time: 32 min.
Year composed: 1803
Moeckel's take: "The Kreutzer is like this tour de force. It's a humongous piece for both instruments. It's notoriously fiendish for the piano. But for the violinist, it's just driven. It is extremely long; it's just huge."
Violin Sonata No. 10 in G major, Op. 96
Estimated running time: 23 min.
Year composed: 1812
Moeckel's take: "It is arguably his biggest work for violin and piano. The 10th will start reminding you of the first sonata of Brahms. . . . The writing — it is the most unique of all of them."
