245: Pianist Nicolas Namoradze on Beethoven's fugues

Beethoven came back to the fugue again and again, but two of his fugues stand above the rest. One closes the Hammerklavier Sonata, a piece of around forty-five minutes. The other, the Grosse Fuge, started life as the finale of a string quartet before Beethoven separated it and published it as a work in its own right. Both are in B flat major, and eight years separate them. The pianist Nicolas Namoradze hears the second as the sequel to the first. On his new album for Ondine, he puts them side by side, and because the Grosse Fuge was written for string quartet, he’s made his own arrangement of it for solo piano.

Lots of delicious detail follows about the fugue, about Beethoven’s use of it, and what the brain is up to when you’re sat at a piano keyboard.