LIUDMILA JEREMIES
BEETHOVEN 250
Going to extremes A combination of earthly force and a sense of the sublime give Beethoven’s music its power, says the Palestinian-Israeli pianist Saleem Ashkar. Owen Mortimer reports ‘
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herever you go, even if people know nothing about classical music, they have heard of Beethoven,’ says Saleem Ashkar. ‘It’s really amazing.’ Ashkar has recently performed several Beethoven sonata cycles in cities across Europe, including Gateshead, Prague, Duisburg and Berlin. He has two more cycles coming up in early 2020 (Copenhagen and Milan), and is in the middle of recording all 32 sonatas for Decca. This deep immersion in Beethoven’s music has prompted Ashkar to think deeply about the composer and his work. ‘There is something about him that has captured the popular imagination,’ he says. ‘He is a man who struggled and fought, was a revolutionary and suffered, but ultimately overcame or transcended these challenges. It’s a very hopeful and inspiring image – and very Romantic.’ Each of Ashkar’s cycles spans eight longish concerts, averaging four sonatas per recital. ‘It’s a huge emotional undertaking,’ he explains, ‘because the music is psychologically very demanding. Beethoven is not a composer who lets you go: he grabs you by the throat.
January 2020 International Piano
Everything is on a knife edge. I find his music among the most difficult repertoire to play. It’s absolutely unforgiving.’ This may sound exhausting, but Beethoven’s music offers ample compensations that make the effort worthwhile. ‘It’s music that is so deep but soars very high,’ says Ashkar. ‘There’s a constant sense of tension between these extremes. With Beethoven, even when I’ve prepared and thought deeply, it feels open-ended. The question always remains: how do I navigate this music and strike a balance between its contrasting demands?’ Ashkar’s three Decca recordings to date reflect this deep thinking, in particular his reading of Sonata No 32, whose closing bars transport the listener to a near-metaphysical realm. This extraordinary moment is the end of a long journey that has taken us to extremes. It has the power to move because it offers ‘a combination of earthly force and sense of the sublime,’ says Ashkar. ‘The trills in the last movement of Opus 111 are like the vibrations of the universe before we existed.’ The sound of Ashkar’s playing is also very distinctive, not least because he has chosen to record his cycle on
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