LDV111-2

25 GARY HOFFMAN, DAVID SELIG Gary Hoffman and David Selig met in 1986 and have been programming Beethoven’s sonatas for many years. Sometimes they even play them all in a single concert. Does this musical ‘journey’ over twenty years of the composer’s life change their perception of the works? Gary Hoffman: Playing the complete sonatas in one concert is bound to alter our approach, but also that of the audience! After all, how many people ever listen to the five sonatas at home for two hours without interruption? The concert format imposes maximum concentration, because these works cover the three major creative periods of Beethoven’s life. Between 1796 and 1816, his style of writing, but also the playing technique of both cello and piano, and the relationship between the two instruments, all changed radically. I tell my students that Beethoven would never have imagined, at the time he wrote his first sonata, that he would one day compose a fugue for cello, which is precisely what concludes the last sonata. The concert audience witnesses this phenomenal mutation. As for the performers . . . we experience the same upheaval directly! David Selig: My perception is absolutely the same as Gary’s. Like most pianists, I was ‘educated’ in the music of Beethoven. The first records I listened to – I was living in Australia at the time – were all of works by him. Giving the complete cello sonatas in concert changes my view of this music without my realising it: the perception of proportions, the relationship between the works and the modes of expression, everything changes and nourishes our intimate knowledge of these masterpieces.