Transcendental Etudes. Solo Concert by Ilya Papoyan

One of the finest Russian pianists of the young generation makes his debut at GES-2 with a performance of Beethoven’s most ambitious piano sonata.

Programme

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)—Franz Liszt (1811–1886)
Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542, S. 463

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Sonata no. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”)
I. Allegro moderato
II. Scherzo
III. Adagio sostenuto. Appassionato e con molto sentimento
IV. Largo — Allegro risoluto

“Only the spirit survives at these heights, above which stretches the starry canopy of the night and immeasurable cold.” Thus wrote the legendary pianist, Heinrich Neuhaus, of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata no. 29 in B flat major, the “Hammerklavier”. Its grandiose series of movements is exceptional even by the standard of the composer’s other late works, which shook the established norms of early nineteenth-century musical language. The “Hammerklavier” challenges the capacities of instrument and performer, the laws of composition and the passage of time. The overarching theme of this work is to go beyond the limits of what is allowed, continuously pushing the boundaries between familiar sound reality and what lies beyond.

Performed by

Ilya Papoyan piano 

Illustration: Anastasia Filippova

Composed between 1817 and 1819, the twenty-ninth sonata was Beethoven’s most ambitious. The conductor and virtuoso pianist Hans von Bülow referred to it, appropriately enough, as the “Ninth Symphony for Piano”. It is exceptionally long for the sonata genre, taking about fifty minutes to perform, and the philosophical content of the work has prompted associations with Goethe’s Faust. Its music still amazes today with its extreme concentration of ideas and the symphonic richness of the writing.

“Hammerklavier” is the name given in German to early pianos, whose novelty was to produce sound by hammering instead of plucking the string, like the harpsichord. The recently invented instrument offered Beethoven a far richer acoustic palette than had been previously available, but the Sonata no. 29 was nevertheless written for an instrument that did not yet exist: many of the work’s acoustic artifices call for technical developments that would only come later and that can only be fully realised on the modern grand piano.

“In the world of art, and in the whole of our great creation, freedom and progress are the main objectives,” Beethoven wrote to Archduke Rudolph, to whom he dedicated the “Hammerklavier”. Beethoven’s late style is indeed forward-looking: the twenty-ninth sonata anticipates both the discoveries of Romantic pianism and those of twentieth-century music. The texture of the final movement even sounds like a direct precursor of Anton von Webern’s musical pointillism. Unsurprisingly, the sonata was long considered to be unplayable. Its world premiere was given in June 1836, nine years after Beethoven’s death, by a musician who became a symbol of the next artistic era—the twenty-four-year-old Franz Liszt.

Ilya Papoyan, also aged twenty-four, precedes his performance of the “Hammerklavier” with an arrangement by Liszt of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G minor for organ. The arrangement was written in the mid-1860s, after the composer and unmatched piano virtuoso had taken monastic vows, following Beethoven on his journey from the earthly to the heavenly.

Ilya Papoyan (b. 2001, Saint Petersburg) graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory where he studied piano with Alexander Sandler and began his studies as an assistant intern under the same teacher. He took third prize at the 17th International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2023, third prize at the Rachmaninoff Competition for Pianists, Composers and Conductors in 2022, and the special prize at the International Piano Franz Liszt Competition Weimar—Bayreuth in 2021. He performs at leading venues in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Since 2024, he has been an assistant at the department of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory for students who are studying piano as their first instrument.