While lockdown for us lesser mortals meant perhaps finding new ways of cataloguing our CD collections or redecorating the bathroom, it seems that the great musicians among us spent it on loftier pursuits, be it Leif Ove Andsnes uncovering the Dvořák gem that is the Poetic Tone Pictures or Bertrand Chamayou finally succumbing to the allure of Satie. The young Italian firebrand Beatrice Rana took a typically single-minded approach, as she recalls: ‘In Italy the lockdown was very serious, which meant I really couldn’t go anywhere, there were no concerts and I had a lot of time on my hands. So, I asked myself what I really wanted to study and practise. And the answer was Beethoven. I thought I might as well spend this time with the most difficult sonata, hence the Hammerklavier. It was something completely personal – I was just curious to see what my approach would be to his writing, his style, now that I was almost 30. And what emerged was how much I had changed over 15 years of not playing Beethoven sonatas on stage.’

The way Rana tells it, it sounds entirely natural, inevitable, that she should have been resting a work since her mid-teens. (No less striking is the fact that she has coupled this on her new album with Chopin’s Second Sonata, which makes for a highly unorthodox yet surprisingly illuminating bedfellow.) But she also found it to be a case of right time, right piece. ‘I was waking up during those days very depressed, the news was so catastrophic – and I remember sitting down at the piano to practise the Hammerklavier and afterwards I’d feel completely energised, and much more optimistic. I also felt that I could relate to the sense of solitude that comes through so powerfully in the third movement – Beethoven’s as a result of his deafness, mine through lockdown.’

That’s borne out by the resulting recording: with Rana combining the fire and energy of youth with a maturity born of her fierce intelligence. She’s also nicely sanguine when it comes to the weight of history, of there being a ‘right time’ to tackle such a work. ‘Well, there’s always a complaint: if you’re too young, you don’t have the wisdom for certain pieces, if you’re too old, you don’t have the stamina – there is always a problem,’ she says, smiling. ‘I had similar issues with the Goldbergs.’

Rana was energised and uplifted by playing the Hammerklavier Sonata in lockdown (photo: Simon Fowler)

Ah, yes! How well I remember my first encounter with Rana on record: those highly addictive Goldberg Variations, recorded when she was still in her early twenties. Had her experience of all that counterpoint helped with the mighty fugue of Op 106, the Hammerklavier? ‘I thought that learning the Beethoven would feel quite natural after Bach, but it’s so different! While there’s a sense of Classical proportions in Beethoven’s fugue, the result doesn’t sound Classical at all – it’s so modern.’

Of her approach to recording, she says: ‘I think of a recording less as an idealised statement of a piece, more as a sort of photograph of a particular time. I just wanted to take a photo of the year of my adventure with Beethoven’ – she devoted the 2022-23 season to performing the Hammerklavier. ‘That’s why it was important to release the album now, rather than in, say, two years’ time – it’s about sharing an artistic process with the audience. And what I love about recording is that it’s a different way to generate art – an opportunity to experiment.’ So this may turn out to be ‘Hammerklavier I’, with a couple more along the way? ‘Exactly!’ she confirms.

Unquestionably, there’s a spark to her playing that’s evident from the very opening – the up-beat is a taut quaver, not the dogged near crotchet of some. I wondered if she played that initial low B flat with her right hand (crossing the hands), rather than with her left? ‘In concert, I play it by crossing the hands – it’s a visual thing, isn’t it? But when I arrived in the studio, I actually thought it sounded better with the “normal” left-hand jump.’

No autograph manuscript survives for this work, which throws up some interesting questions along the way, not least the infamous A sharp/A natural conundrum in the first movement (bars 224-26) just before the recapitulation. Most assume that it should be an A natural, but not Rana. ‘I felt it had to be the A sharp – there’s more tension in it, which makes it more interesting. But I spent more time thinking about a passage before that, slightly earlier in the development, where [at bars 210 and 212] there’s a G sharp marked in the Henle edition, but in the first London edition it’s a G natural.’ In the end, she opted for the latter.

We can’t discuss this piece without covering the vexed issue of metronome marks: Beethoven’s adoption of Johann Maelzel’s recent invention results in optimistically speedy tempos that, even if Carl Czerny believed they were possible, would make for a garbled mess, musically speaking. Rana says, ‘The main problem is the third movement, the Adagio sostenuto, where quaver = 92 is simply too fast. I think everything about interpreting this sonata is such a challenge, and the metronome markings fall into that category too. The technical level of playing in the third millennium is, of course, higher than it was when this piece was written, but for me, these markings are more an indication of mood, of the sense of challenge that this sonata presents.’

I wondered if Rana’s pacing of the slow movement had come about after a lot of experimentation. ‘Well, the problem with a movement like this is it’s like honey for bears – we musicians love it so much that it’s very easy to become self-indulgent. It’s such a pleasure to play. But it’s also around 16 minutes long, so it’s vital that there’s a sense of architecture to it, or the proportions get lost. But as well as that, the sense of struggle of the melody itself needs to be there.’ And all this at the most hushed dynamics – with only two fortes marked in the entire movement. ‘Otherwise it would be too easy!’ she laughs. ‘When I started studying this movement, I worried that because so much of it was pianissimo it would be dull, but when I tried something more extrovert, I was very unhappy with the result. It’s a bit like James Joyce – a flow of thoughts, an inwardness that builds up such tension that it needs the fourth movement to release it, almost like an explosion.’

I’ve long thought that the passage linking the slow movement to the fugue is not only one of the most magical things in all Beethoven sonatas, but also one of the hardest, interpretatively speaking. And it’s filled with instructions! I wondered how easily it had come to Rana, given that she imbues its mystery with a wonderful clarity of thought. ‘It certainly wasn’t natural for me. The fugue – no problem. The third movement, also – in a sense, I found a way through. But connecting the two – you’re trying to build a bridge from F sharp major at the end of the Adagio to this bare F natural as the Largo begins, and you’re going from ppp to piano, which is, of course, relatively loud compared with what has gone before. It took a lot of work to get that right.’

As for the Allegro risoluto, is its fugue subject so upbeat that a happy ending is guaranteed, or is it more of a conflicted journey? ‘I do think there’s still a tension between the affirmative fugue theme and what has gone before – all those emotional uncertainties in the Adagio sostenuto and the start of the fourth movement. And when Beethoven breaks off into silence and the D major chorale arrives [bar 250], that’s another moment of upset, of disruption that leaves you thinking, “Now where is this going? Is this going to end well or not?” And it’s only as you reach the final bars, and that sense of finally finding B flat, that you know you’ve made it. It’s a journey like no other.’

Read the review: Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata and Chopin's Piano Sonata No 2 (Beatrice Rana)

This article originally appeared in the March 2024 issue of Gramophone. Never miss an issue – subscribe today