DAILY DOSE of BEETHOVEN (May 5, 2020)

Today, we again present a wonderful performance by Pablo Casals and friends from the Prades-Perpignan Festival. This time it presents a paradox: How can classical music portray pure evil, while remaining beautiful? Modern music can portray ugliness, simply by being ugly. If a composer stands by natural law, utilizing the intervals discovered by Kepler in the solar system itself, and developed into the well-tempered system by J.S. Bach; then even though that system may lawfully evolve, it remains based on the beautiful proportions ordained by the universe, and can never be ugly. Yet, it can portray every emotional state, including evil. A paradox indeed!

Here, we present the second movement from Beethoven's Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 70 # 1, nicknamed The Ghost, performed by Casals, Rudolf Serkin, and Szymon Goldberg, from the Prades Festival of 1954.

Beethoven was working on making Shakespeare's MacBeth into an opera. He gave it up, because it was becoming "too gloomy." The themes used in this slow movement are said to derive from his sketches for the "Witches Scene" from MacBeth. Some modern scholars, as usual, deny any connection, though they fail to account for the movement's bone-chilling quality, and unnerving restlessness. The bass line should be a foundation—solid ground. Yet here, it is performed on a trill—you are walking on quicksand.

Though the movement does not represent how Beethoven would have set the "Witches' Scene", it does capture the evil of that scene. Some performances of the play treat the witches as a caricature. Others, more accurately, portray the pure evil of the way they manipulate a superstitious MacBeth.

Beethoven, in the 3rd movement, wrenches his listeners upwards, into a happier state. He will not leave you in Hades! Please check out the entire trio and tell us what you think!