Ludwig van Beethoven's Opus Nr. 27 No. 1, 2nd Movement

I am certainly not very knowledgeable when it comes to classical music, but I have tried to explore it a bit more and discover my own taste. One source for this was a podcast that has been produced by German public radio that discusses each piano sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven in a separate episode (in German, available here). In this podcast, the pianist Igor Levit plays brief moments and discusses them with the co-host Anselm Cybinski.

Recently, I listened to the episode on Opus Nr. 27, No. 1 and was totally fascinated by the second movement. This movement “Allegro molto e vivace” is only two minutes long, but I kept listening to it on repeat. It is played during the podcast episode almost in full length, but I found it fascinating to search for different versions of this same piece of music. A recurring theme of the podcast is the discussion of the two hosts how pianists are forced to interpret the piece (and cannot simply “play it as it has been written”) - and this becomes very apparent even for this very short piece of music. Igor Levit’s interpretation sounds very fluid and seems to try to connect all the different elements, while Glenn Gould’s interpretation uses much more staccato. I’m really captivated by Levit’s version, but also had never realized in such a way before how one interpretation of the same sheet music can be so much more to my taste than another version.

(More interpretations are i.a. available at Idagio)