Beethoven: Missa solemnis.

TWO BEETHOVENS, ONE VERDI

AN EARNEST M.D. turned musicologist once diagnosed the "strangely broken rhythms" in the cavatina of one of Beethoven's last quartets as "the heartbeat of an arteriosclerotic" and had a stethoscope planted on history to prove it. An even more earnest psychiatrist might well describe the Missa Solemnis as the product of a troubled conscience. Page William Hazlitt, who compared critics to loons diving for meaning and coming up with their pocket handkerchiefs.

Beethoven, unlike his predecessors and contemporaries, was preoccupied as much by the uses of rhythm as he was by harmonic structure, and this can be heard particularly in the piano sonatas, his most personal utterance. You will agree with me when you hear Paul Badura-Skoda's playing of the Appassionata (Opus 57). Man and boy, I have heard this sonata in concert hall and on records--played by Schnabel, Serkin, Solomon, you name the pianist. And it has always appeared to be, as some have said, a disjointed collection of prayerful or thunderous passages, and a compote of diminished sevenths. The surge and drive of the Beethoven beat, its premeditated stops and starts, have been missing. Not even Serkin could make of it a Gestalt.

Badura-Skoda's new recording (Astree AS 74, Harmonia Mundi U.S.A., 3364 South Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles, Calif. 90034) throws open the doors to a full appreciation and understanding of what until now was a mishandled score. For from the first notes of the first movement--too pensively played even by the impetuous Solomon--Badura-Skoda gives the Appassionata power and elan and, above all, clarity. Some may quarrel with Badura-Skoda's tempi, but to my mind they are a necessary extension of the composer's intent. Listening, you sit on the edge of your chair, and when the last note has echoed, you let out your breath with that joyous satisfaction which great music in great performance produces.