It's been a Beethoven week this week. Last Monday pianist Daniel Barenboim embarked on his complete cycle of Beethoven's 32 sonatas, which is taking place at the Royal Festival Hall. In the opening concert the 65-year-old pianist outlined a quasi A to Z of Beethoven's sonatas, beginning with Sonata No. 1 in F minor, passing through No. 18 in E flat and ending with the epic Sonata No. 29 in B flat. With his unfailing musical wisdom, and despite a few slips of the hand, Barenboim turned the sonatas into discussions about the world - of philosophy, of human nature, of our struggles, failures, efforts and desires. Themes that author Milan Kundera weaves with similar mastery into his The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Kundera's meditation on Beethoven's variations - a musical form opposite in nature to sonata form - is thought-provoking and strangely beautiful. Perhaps something is lost by quoting out of context, but here's a short extract:
Variation form is the form in which concentration is brought to its maximum; it enables the composer to speak only of essentials, to go straight to the core of the matter. A theme for variations often consists of no more than sixteen measures. Beethoven goes inside these measures as if down a shaft leading to the interior of the earth.
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