Chopin: Sonata No.3 in B minor, Op.58 (Sultanov, Duchâble, Fliter)

This sonata *sonatas*. That isn’t an entirely trivial observation, because Chopin’s last sonata is by far and away his most conventional. All the movements do what they’re supposed to – there’s none of the Op.35’s canted bleakness, or the Op.4’s experimental perversity. Composers often get radical in their late works, but that trend is bucked in the Op.58: we get instead a composer comfortable enough in his idiom not to feel a need to break the mould.

This work's craft is directed inward, into detail, texture, and shape. Take the first movement. It’s a standard classical sonata-allegro: highly sectional, motivically driven – the development even does the standard classical-era thing of exploring the material which came just before it. Yet this movement feels like it contains too much material, because its themes are so wildly different and come in such quick succession (three closing themes?), that on first listen you end up a little lost. It’s only familiarity with the work that’s blinded modern audiences to this basic oddness. This movement is also marked by unusual contrapuntal density; the development in particular is a masterclass in extraordinarily free and intricate motivic layering.

The wisp of a second movement is only the second time (after the Op.4’s minuet) that Chopin wrote something lighthearted in a sonata. It a study in contrast, both with the first movement, and internally between the scampering scherzo and the dreamy, slightly absentminded trio. The third movement is an ABA nocturne, but within this simple structure there’s a lot going on – most notably a series of otherworldly modulations that Chopin recalls at the movement’s end by the prominent use of a G (natural) in the bass. The B section is one of the hardest things to interpret well; it endless spooling feels like accompaniment to an unwritten melody, and in the wrong hands it can go from “transcendent time-stopper” to “bit long, isn’t it?”.

The last movement is a good old-fashioned finale of the rabble-rousing kind – it starts off tense, like a thing on the prowl, and builds relentlessly into an exuberant blitz. The mastery here is in how a simple ABABA is given such a strong sense of linear propulsion, through continuous intensification of textures, surprising interruptions in the formal scheme (mm.182, 250), and a surprising amount of deft counterpoint, particularly in the LH (see the rising G-B chromatic line in mm.205-7).

The performances here demonstrate three different ways into a notoriously tricky work. Sultanov is dizzyingly inventive and almost superhumanly energetic. In the first movement contrapuntal detail (m.23, the mesmeric interplay between LH and RH at m.35, the rising LH line at m.44) is foregrounded, and even simple passages (m.74) are surprisingly expressive. The second movement features lots of playful interaction between the LH and RH, and the last movement is taken at a treacherous tempo that (along with sparing use of the pedal) allows the stark contrapuntal shapes and pedal points in the bass to shine.

Duchable represents an opposite approach – he contains the sprawl of the work with remarkably steady tempi and a general reluctance to engage in point-making. The middle sections of movements 2 & 3 are so quick they are almost brusque (in the latter, Duchable actually speeds up at m.61). At these speeds, macroscopic features of the music (especially long-note countermelodies) clarify, and nothing drags. The last movement is taken at a strictly unwavering tempo from first bar to last that gives it huge rhythmic drive and makes the buildup Chopin writes into the music very palpable. That’s not to say there aren’t nice expressive details – the overdotting of the nocturne in the third movement, for instance, or the often-neglected descrescendo in the work’s closing bars (m.278).

Like Sultanov, Fliter is expressive, but where he engages in big gesture, she leans toward exploring detail. In the first movement, fortes are carefully rationed so that when they come they really hit hard. The second movement’s trio is phrased very freely, giving it a dreamlike, hallucinatory quality. The third movement’s outer nocturne is given minimalist treatment – the tempo is relatively quick, allowing the melody to connect, while the middle section is contrastingly expansive. The last movement is a masterclass in touch and texture – Fliter finds so many interesting variegations in the single-line melody (m.12, 16) it’s hard to keep track of them. Scalar passages are treated less as virtuoso gestures than real melodies, with lots of expressive colour and tapering.

Sultanov
00:00 – Mvt 1, Allegro maestoso
08:12 – Mvt 2, Scherzo
10:45 – Mvt 3, Largo
19:43 – Mvt 4, Finale

Duchable
24:26 – Mvt 1, Allegro maestoso
36:12 – Mvt 2, Scherzo
38:47 – Mvt 3, Largo
47:28 – Mvt 4, Finale

Fliter
52:24 – Mvt 1, Allegro maestoso
1:05:20 – Mvt 2, Scherzo
1:08:29 – Mvt 3, Largo
1:18:13 – Mvt 4, Finale