Serkin in the “Moonlight”

Posted by mwblogger

October 25, 2009

Is it me, or does Rudolf Serkin’s recording of the first movement of the Opus 27 “Moonlight Sonata” (which I’ve got on The Essential Rudolf Serkin) really really slow down to the end, like a watch winding down, in a way out Mahler-ing Mahler? I listened to it several times and even tried to jump from the recapitulation (which happens at around 3.46 or thereabouts) back to the beginning of the piece and honestly I cannot tell. At first, his pace almost seems antic (well, antic for the “Moonlight Sonata” certainly) but in contrast they seem exactly the same though when I listen all the way through it seems to inexorably slow, dwindle. Weird.

Glenn Gould gets a rap for singing on his recordings, which he does (and it can certainly annoy: when I listen with headphones I sometimes think someone is calling from another room) but here’s something I never knew before listening to this so many times: Rudolf Serkin sings too! Who knew? Seems like the ever-eccentric Gould might not be the only one who simply cannot help himself. Don’t believe me, listen to the gruff grumbling on this track (and many of the others, especially the beginning of the Allegretto and Trio from the same work) not to mention some near grunting on the final movement—though who can blame him, it is fiendishly difficult (and his tempo is rollicking and open-throttled).

Now when I listen to the piece as a whole, I smile—for real!—at Serkin’s overall conception, at least as I understand it. Take the first movement slow and get slower, a true moonfall; take the second movement and make it near-dull (though never without a quiet behind-the-scenes verve and wry wit) so as to allow the pure virtuoso fireworks of the final to seem all-the-more rapid-fire. Now that is pure instrumental interpretive drama. You can almost hear him laughing as he thinks, like he’s going to lull you into a state of complicity out of which he will break you in the most violent way. Shocking. And what’s more, his push-pull crimping of the final movement (sometimes just when you think he’s going to stop the momentum he kicks it up a notch or three) makes the tension all the more unbearable.

For me, what’s always fascinated about this piece is that, though written in what many might consider Beethoven’s middle period (that of the Fifth Symphony, the Razumovsky Quartets, and his lone opera) there’s much forward-looking here. If you believe the too simple notion that his early period was a sloughing off of the (excellent) influence of Haydn and Mozart while his late was a near-apocalyptic futureshocking reckoning with the “to come,” his middle remained the period of surefooted formal mastery. Yet to me the over-played and therefore easily written-off “Moonlight Sonata” looks more forward and back than anything, delving deep in the first movement (a slow first movement was quite a novel thing for a sonata, slow movements being reserved largely for second movements) and pushing the envelope with the last, the second movement is almost a wary tip-of-the-hat to his formal masters. Almost as if this sonata says (at least how Serkin would have it): “Come in, I’m in a strange mood. Oh no, now that I’ve eaten I feel just fine. And now, let me tell you something incredible that you will never believe because its just so weird.”

Purchase Rudolf Serkin Plays Beethoven here.

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