Beethoven! Ronald Brautigam speelt o.a. 'Der Sturm', 'Waldstein' en 'Les adieux'

Ronald Brautigam

Ronald Brautigam, honored with the Concertgebouw Medal in 2024, has left quite a few footprints in the halls on Van Baerlestraat. The number of times the pianist has performed there is impressive. At the time of the Medal, the count stood at 268, and the counter has continued to rise steadily ever since. During three afternoons in the Small Hall, Brautigam plays a selection from Beethoven's piano works, which he considers the bible for pianists. 'I have been playing this music for a very long time; there isn't so much a challenge when I start a sonata like this, it is more a matter of enjoyment. When I play, I listen along. Often I think: how incredibly beautiful this is, or: what a strange turn! This music remains fresh, no matter how often I play it, and it remains a mystery why that is.'

Beethoven's piano sonatas (middle)

"In the three concertos, you can very clearly hear the three periods into which you can subdivide Beethoven's oeuvre," says Ronald Brautigam. "First, he is still the pianist who composed; in the second period, you hear the balance in that; and at the end, there is the composer who has absolutely nothing to do with the piano anymore, but focuses purely on the music." Brautigam describes the Sturm Sonata of this second Beethoven evening as an experiment; Beethoven experiments with form and with everything you can do on the instrument. According to the pianist, the Waldstein Sonata is a central work, "something like the Eroica Symphony; you can't escape that. In number 24," he says, "you hear that Beethoven was not just an angry and grumpy man, but could also be very much in love and write gentle music." Brautigam plays on a fortepiano. According to him, it is important that these works are performed on a fierce-sounding instrument.