Professor Steve Jones is Rob Cowan’s guest this week on Radio 3. This morning he chose Mozart Piano concerto 457 played by Mitsuko Uchida.
I was busy doing other things, my mind wandered. Then I wandered down to the kitchen; it’s harder to tune the old fashioned knob on the radio down there – especially to FM – so I thought I had somehow got it wrong when I heard Beethoven’s Pathetique sonata – but being played all wrong. Well, not wrong exactly, just a very unusual interpretation -.rhythm & phrasing, very light, dancing even.
Steve Jones had made some remarks about genes & culture & the universality of the language of music with special reference to the number of great Japanese interpreters of western classical music. Could culture be the explanation?
I am in no way a musical expert but the Beethoven Pathetique is the one score I do know as well as could anybody who studied (& fell in love with) it for O level more than half a century ago. I hasten to add that this did not in any way involve my being able to play it, just understand the structure etc.
I bought – with my own money – an EP of Sviatoslav Richter playing it which I listened to over & over again.
The experience in my kitchen was really disorienting – that phrase was just so recognisable, but …
I went back upstairs, where I knew the radio was most definitely tuned to Radio 3, made my self sit down & listen till the end – by which time I was sure it wasn’t Beethoven I was listening to, but it was good to have confirmation that it was the Mozart I had been hearing all along.
Dr Google has reassured me that others have noticed the coincidence – I have not gone doolally yet.
But it must, surely, by some chance be the very first time I have ever heard that Mozart sonata, otherwise I should have recognised & remembered the resemblance.
Wouldn’t I?
