BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 6 in F Major, Op. 10/2; Piano Sonata No. 9 in E Major, Op. 14/1; Piano Sonata No. 21 in C Major, Op. 53 “Waldstein” – Béla Síki, piano – Forgotten Records FR 2366 (46:25) [www.forgottenrecords.com] *****:
Hungarian virtuoso Béla Síki (1923-2020) studied with Leo Weiner, Erno von Dohnányi, and Dinu Lipatti, winning the 1948 Geneva Competition. Síki earned world renown as a touring concert artist, and his recorded discography includes collaborations with many distinguished conductors, Sir Eugene Goossens among them. Having moved to the United States in 1965, Síki established himself at the University of Washington in Seattle, with a brief tenure at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, between 1980-1985. Síki returned to Seattle and the University of Washington to remain until his retirement in 2001. Pianist and former colleague Craig Sheppard provides a telling insight into Síki’s character:
Wonderful friend, pedagogue and pianist. I first met Béla at the Leeds Competition in 1972, where he was on the jury. Although Béla retired just as I took up my post here at the University of Washington in 1993, we saw him and his wonderful wife, Yolande, socially from time to time. Several years later, when another colleague suddenly decided to retire, Béla was asked to come back and ‘fill in’ by his former student, Dr. Robin McCabe, who was Director of our School of Music for fifteen years. It was during those years that I came to know him as a wise and caring colleague, someone with a vast life’s experience to whom I could turn for advice. . .. Béla was always the gentleman and always the perceptive listener, with a wealth of wisdom and humanity.
Forgotten Records restores an all-Beethoven recital, recorded in 1958 by the British Pye label. The tempos here are somewhat more brisk and tauter than those Síki realized, for example in his University of Washington recital of 5 January 1990, in which the Waldstein Sonata conveys a broader girth. Síki applies a light hand and sense of classical architecture to the F Major Sonata of 1798, whose playful first movement Allegro suggests a two-note question with a triplet response. The artful influence of Haydn allows Beethoven to utilize a favorite ploy, of having a false recapitulation in D major rather than F; and so, by not adjusting the tempo, Síki maintains a straight face. Delicacy and tenderness of gesture characterize the Allegretto, a minuet and trio, saving its coda for the bit of humor, set in three measures. The last movement, Presto, plays like a canonic moto perpetuo, a variety of the metronomic experiments that reach a culmination in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 in F. Síki has the mechanical fixation dance with a fervor that hints at the energies yet to be unleashed by the Bonn master.
The E Major Sonata, Op. 14, No. 1 (1798) was a great favorite of Gina Bachauer, who emphasized the new chromaticism that now informed Beethoven’s sense of conventional sonata form. After four sparkling measures, Síki injects those chromatic dissonances, gruff bass interjections, and angular scalar patterns that quietly signal revolution. Síki’s textures prove so transparent that the flowing materials and passing dissonances seem harmless enough, lulling us into a world where complacency fails us. The ternary-metered Allegretto in E minor combines a dance impulse with a parlando spirit of meditation. The trio section, in C major, Síki plays a tad marcato, a stately pace with galant hues. Síki’s controlled dynamics, mostly p and mf, keep us attuned to his especial colors. The last movement, a Rondo: Allegro commodo, lavishes us with a sterling articulation of scalar figures in uncertain agogics, not quite upbeats or downbeats, and strong chords off the beat. The wry wit of the piece hides behind a patina of seamless continuity.
The 1804 Waldstein Sonata, named after a Bohemian aristocrat who championed Beethoven’s rising fame, is contemporaneous with the absolutely revolutionary Eroica Symphony, the work that “freed music.” We recall the piano sonata as such served as Beethoven’s experimental laboratory; when he achieved a synthesis, he composed string quartets. This sonata opens in C major but with no theme in itself, only motor activity. The counter move does not involve a modulation to the dominant G but to the mediant E. The development section will proceed, by circuitous, routes to F and later E major, in the course of which Síki must perform musical gymnastics with registrations and melodic voicings. That Síki genuinely feels affection for this sonata becomes evident from the outset: besides the authority of his phrasing and internal architecture, we have a patina warm and perpetually inviting. We will feel righteously startled to find ourselves duped by the E major theme when it has reappeared in A major, only to catapult to the coda in the correct mode of C!
Beethoven discarded his original F major second movement, his genial Andante favori, which became published separately. His new Introduzione: Adagio molto seems a grotesquerie: nine ambiguous measures, an eight-measure melody, and twelve more measures that invoke a universe rife with harmonic wandering. And suddenly we stand at the threshold, or precipice, of a Rondo: Allegretto moderato. Síki plays this movement in such a persuasive manner that I am tempted to label the articulation “feminine,” realizing that I invite “political” trouble. But the sensuous palette before us has rarely been realized with this kind of effortless grace – where Rudolf Serkin, on the other hand, convinces un by the sheer and consistent motor power of his playing. The music argues C major against A minor until the coda, marked Prestissimo, where every bit of Síki’s innate bravura and digital dexterity reveals itself without apology. My only suggestion after this is to have listeners acquire his “mature” rendition at Washington University 32 years later!
—Gary Lemco
