Mitsuko Uchida | Beethoven

“I have no fear for my music. It can meet no evil fate,” Ludwig van Beethoven believed. “Those who understand it must become free from all the miseries that the others drag with them.” More than anything else, this self-assessment applies to Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas: music of farewell and at the same time of new beginnings. The E major Sonata beguiles with a precious, otherworldly sarabande — a gift to posterity. The Sonata in A-flat major recalls a psychological drama that soars from the depths of despair to the joy of resurrection: the image of Music itself as consolation. And following the grim, tormented first movement, the C minor Sonata culminates in the closing Arietta, an ecstatic song in C major that is far removed from all earthly heaviness. The great pianist Mitsuko Uchida, who was born in Japan, grew up in Vienna, and was elevated to the peerage in her adopted country of the United Kingdom, has immersed herself in Beethoven’s sound cosmos all her life. Now, after performing internationally for a half-century, she returns to these last sonatas — to this “magnificent vision of the universe,” as she describes Beethoven’s pianistic legacy.