Beethoven! Ronald Brautigam speelt o.a. Sonate nr. 32 en Diabelli-variaties

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 work (late)

"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." In addition to Beethoven's last sonata, with the boogie-woogie, Brautigam plays the Diabelli Variations . "Beethoven shows here how you can build an enormous work from one small waltz, as if you were squeezing ten bottles of limoncello from one lemon," says Brautigam. He plays on a modern concert grand piano. "Many of the variations in the Diabelli Variations are intended much more for string quartet than for piano. On a modern grand piano, the sounds blend more horizontally, as if you have a bowed note."