Zhu Xiao Mei, why did you choose this coupling of last Sonatas of Beethoven and

Schubert ?



There’s one obvious fact in life : each one of us has to go someday. We all try to hide it from ourselves. And then comes the moment when you really become conscious of it, when that obvious fact becomes a reality you’re going to live with and not just an abstract idea that crosses your mind from time to time. I’ve noticed it often comes with an illness or a bereavement that makes a particularly strong impression on you. I experienced that awareness about ten years ago. It made me want to go back and take a closer look at what those two great geniuses of music, Beethoven and Schubert, had to say in their last piano Sonata.



But there’s a big difference between the two composers. Beethoven completed his op.111 in January 1822, more than five years before his death, whereas Schubert put the finishing touches to his Sonata in B flat major in September 1828, less than two months before he died.



Yes, that’s true. What’s more, the Sonata in B flat is the last major work Schubert composed, whereas after op.111 Beethoven wrote no less than the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, the late quartets and, to say with the piano repertory, the Diabelli Variations. That being said, I’m convinced that it’s in op.111, on the piano, that he offers us his supreme statement about death. For me, neither the Diabelli Variations nor his farewell to the piano, the Bagatelles of op.126, have anything to say about death.



Op.111 is in just two movements and so deviates from the traditional design of the piano Sonata.



Yes in reality, the form seems quite limpid to me. The first movement symbolises combat, struggle. Beethoven, who knew all about the question, reminds us of this very simple message : you have to fight for life. The first movement generates an extreme tension, rather like the fist movement of the Fifth Symphony in its time, but above all it paves the way for the second, where everything is at stake…



A set of Variations…



Yes, on a very simple theme and in the simplest of keys, C major. Rather like the initial Aria of the Goldberg Variations. Aria, Arietta, there’s a resemblance there…

It also reminds us of the last movement of the Sonata op.109. There are countless examples of variation movements in late Beethoven. Why do you think that is ?



You’re right : late Beethoven is obsessed by Variations. And by Fugue too. Just like me ! (laughter)

I think that variation, especially when it has a cyclic character, with an initial theme that reappears at the end, as is the case here and also in the Goldbergs and op.109, is one of the forms that take you closest to the inexpressible.

Once the theme of the Arietta has been stated, there comes a first variation, then a second in fugato form, which screws up the tension. Then comes the third variation which so many pianists play like a jazz piece, wild and virtuosic, whereas for me it’s imbued with the utmost nobility. It’s with the fourth variation that everything changes…



It introduces us into another world ?



Exactly. It starts pianissimo. We rise up, we detach ourselves from the word, we penetrate the layer of clouds that surrounds the earth, we reach a sky with splendid colours ; we are elsewhere. No one had ever composed music like this before Beethoven. It takes us into an unknown word, with strange modulations. Then, in the next variation, Beethoven calls for the extreme bass and the extreme treble of the instrument, as if he wanted to cram the whole world into his piano. Finally the initial theme recurs, like a hymn to the glory of the world, before breaking up, sinking into a sort of nothingness, of non-being, which is also a form of deliverance. There lies supreme wisdom. 



Supreme wisdom lies in non-being ?



For me, yes. That said, op.111 is in my view atypical in Beethoven’s output. In his later piano works, the Diabelli Variations or the Bagatelles op.126, I don’t recognise the same sentiments. Nor indeed in his late quartets. The idea of struggle is again very present there. In Beethoven’s late works, I see this aspiration to non-being, to nothingness, to silence, this very renunciation of the struggle, in op.111 above all.



There’s another idea that touches me very much in this work, the idea that, for true sages like Beethoven, what is outside oneself doesn’t count. His true strength comes from within. He can be vivified, rejected, imprisoned : he has understood that real freedom is inside himself.

Although it’s virtually contemporary, Schubert’s sonata in B flat sends us a very different message…



We’re in a completely different universe. Schubert is ill and short of money. He’s going to die two months later. Does he have a presentiment of that ? We don’t know. Whatever the case, at this time he’s composing incredible masterpieces, notably his last piano Sonata and the Quintet with two cellos, which for me are two of the finest works that deal with death.



What de you think is Schubert’s attitude to death ?



Resigned and contemplative at the same time. For me that emerges very clearly in the first two movements of the B flat Sonata. The second movement of this Sonata takes us to another place, where only Schubert is capable of leading us. It’s in a key - C sharp minor - that is at the opposite pole from the B flat major of the other three movements. It’s an extremely meditative, painful movement.



I don’t think Schubert faces death serenely. The music of these first two movement is shot through with mysterious passages and moments of revolt. Death is a wrenching experience for Schubert…



Whereas there’s more of a sense of detachment in Beethoven’s op.111 ?



In a way. Beethoven composed his op.111 when he was more than fifty years old. Schubert was only thirty-one when he left this earth. The difference of age must surely be an element of explanation. That being the case, I’m not sure that the thirty-year-old Beethoven spoke as profoundly of death as Schubert does in his Sonata.



What would you like to say about the last two movements of the B flat Sonata ?



Their atmosphere is completely different, much more luminous. They have a playful, even joyful character, even though they go through moments of anguish or revolt, like the Trio of the Scherzo or the fortissimo passages of the finale, which are preceded each time by two bars of agonising silence.



Are there other composers who speak as eloquently of death in their final keyboard works as Beethoven and Schubert do ?



Bach, in his Art of Fugue, is already no longer of this world. He’s on the other side of the mirror. Mozart, with his little Andante in F major, is telling us, I think, that he couldn’t care less.

Beethoven and Schubert speak to us like two brothers baring their innermost soul, and they are both overwhelmingly moving.



Interviewer : Michel Mollard
Translation : Charles Johnston