The Piano Sonatas
Schnabel to Willems
Seventy years ago, the renowned Beethoven interpreter, Artur Schnabel relunctantly entered London's Abbey Road studios to start a ten year project recording all the piano works of Beethoven. Schnabel needed a lot of convincing before allowing himself to become a slave to what was then novel technology. He abhorred the idea of having no control over his listeners and thought recording went against the very essence of performing. In his words, the "nature of performance is to happen but once, to be absolutely ephemeral and unrepeatable." His producer, Fred Gaisberg wrote "... (Schnabel) considered it impossible for a mere machine to reproduce the dynamics of his playing faithfully".
The great interpreters who bravely followed in the Austrian's footsteps represent a United Nations of pianists. Yet, as a student of these works, I was intrigued by the fact that no Australian had put up their hand. Eventually, the fascination became an obsession.
A chance encounter at a Beethoven master class he was conducting convinced me that Gerard Willems possessed the exacting combination of classical control and spirituality that Beethoven demands. Like his idol seven decades earlier, Willems took a lot of persuading before he agreed to this enormous task, the pianist's equivalent of sailing solo around the world.
Finally he agreed - but with one condition: his choice of instrument. Schnabel had his beloved Bechstein, Gerard Willems wanted to give Beethoven a new voice. Given that composer's love-hate relationship with the pianos of his day, it is rather ironic that Willems, whose ancestors trod the same Flemmish soil as Beethoven's, chose to record the sonatas on the world's newest piano. Many scholars wonder what sounds Beethoven conceived in his mind after he lost his hearing. Willems speculated that it could have been the symphonic tapestry, the palette of colours produced by a Stuart & Sons concert grand.
Australia's revolutionary piano
For Wayne Stuart, the evolution of the piano didn't cease at the end of the nineteenth century. New technologies and materials available in the latter half of the twentieth century gave him the opportunity to create an instrument with outstanding clarity and sustaining power. By mid-1997, the die was cast. A relatively unknown pianist with a rare connection to Beethoven, a novice producer with an indecent obsession and a recording engineer set out for what was to be our home-away-from-home for three years, the Newcastle Conservatorium where the Stuart piano project was housed. While history will be Willems' judge, a producer's rewards are more immediate. I know today that we have given the irascible 19th Century genius from Bonn a bold, revolutionary Australian voice for the new millennium.
Brendan Ward
Producer and Project Instigator
Hammerklavier Productions
Sydney
July, 2000