Pause for a Canadian Beethoven Poll

Year Two, Week 30, in one pianist’s journey to perform the 32 sonatas of Beethoven

People are saying that Canada’s federal election tomorrow may be the most consequential since World War Two. Thus, today we’ll take a Canada-themed pause for a minute of rest and reflection.

After that, you’ll have the chance to warm up your democratic muscles by voting on a very Canadian question. No, it’s not about the apple fritters versus the blueberry ones (whatever happened to those) at Tim Hortons.

But first, a brief explanation for non-Canadians of what’s known here as the CBC Heritage Minute. This is an educational one-minute PSA (public service announcement) by our public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, or CBC. Heritage Minutes are descended from the CBC’s former PSA’s, which were named “Hinterland Who’s Who”. Yes, even in our Great Northern Hinterland, we had our celebrities. We’ll get to the Beethoven ones in a minute.

Whoever was playing the flute in Hinterland Who’s Who, their sound is part of my toddler memories of the TV in our living room. Here’s a vintage example. You can see their value – who knew there was more than one “race” of Canada Geese??

(As a heads-up, you might have to double or triple-click on the links to get them to work – I did.)

While Canada, and this emerging Beethoven pianist, were growing up together, large chunks were being taken out of the CBC budget by successive governments. Before the 1990s, both the CBC and Beethoven pianists had enjoyed robust arts funding. After the 90s, we all soldiered on with greatly diminished resources. Meanwhile, the CBC updated its Hinterland PSA’s into Heritage Minutes.

I’m going to present your Canadian pre-election pause in the form of a CBC Heritage Minute. I’ve chosen a relevant clip, given that two ballot-box issues are a) the housing crisis, and b) the CBC.

There’s a candidate for Prime Minister who promises to eliminate 100% of public funding for the CBC within their first 100 days of governance. Their argument is that the CBC is more of an expenditure than an investment, one which the private sector could better handle. This candidate is also proposing to solve the housing crisis by cutting taxes on the private sector. They would also negotiate reduced building regulations at all levels of government. These actions, they claim, would create a more favourable environment for the private sector to build homes.

There’s another candidate for Prime Minister who advocates increasing, rather than cutting, CBC funding. They argue that one must distinguish between investments and expenditures when costing a budget, and that the CBC is an investment in the cultural sovereignty of the country. This candidate also sees a solution to the housing crisis in terms of making investments, rather than slashing expenditures. They propose a government project to build a large number of pre-fab homes, using sustainable designs that would address the issue of climate change.

The CBC Heritage Minute I’ve chosen presents a moment in Canada’s history when veterans returned from World War Two and could not afford housing. The solution then was for the federal government to mass-produce small, efficient pre-fab units.

There’s one of those units just down the lane from me. It’s still functional, sitting there before my eyes, without a doubt a tangible investment. After this one’s family grew up and moved out, it was used as a cottage for decades. Recently it was sold to a new investor, who has done a reno. He tells me he marvels at its solid, practical construction, and that out of his multiple properties, he’s decided to use this one for himself and his wife. Here’s a pic of his newly painted place, still boarded up for the winter:

And here’s your Heritage Minute.

And now, onwards to your poll. The question concerns Canadian Beethoven pianists.

While figuring out how to make polls on Substack, I discovered that while there are six Canadian pianists who have recorded the Beethoven sonatas, the poll template only allows five options. So I’ve taken an inclusive Canadian decision to create a coalition between some of my six candidates.

We’ll compare candidates on this issue: how to play the deeply tragic slow movement that is found hidden within the otherwise light and sunny Beethoven Sonata in D major, Opus 10 No. 3.

This is not a well-known sonata, and I’ve chosen it partly to go, hey you guys, listen to this great sonata!

Beethoven marked this movement to be played “Largo e mesto”. A simple, clear direction. Play it slowly and sadly.

I’ll present the candidates in chronological order by their age. Age is relevant insofar as the older they are, the more CBC funding they had to build their careers. So while Glenn Gould famously had the run of the old CBC Toronto building and was found there pretty much whenever he left his Toronto apartment, Stewart Goodyear and Angela Hewitt have moved out of the country and mostly tour abroad.

First, here’s Glenn Gould, born September 25, 1932. Gould here plays in a style more romantic than usual, with rubato and rolled chords, and musical rhetoric augmented by his own audible verbal rhetoric.

Second up is Robert Silverman, born six years later on July 21, 1938. You can hear Bob’s distinctive rich sound and thoughtful, spare colouring and pacing.

I’ve made an unlikely coalition between Bob and the next candidate, Anton Kuerti, who was born just four weeks later than Bob on July 21, 1938. Both pianists received a great deal of attention from CBC during their lives. Anton’s sound is utterly different from Bob’s. Possessed of a light touch and quicksilver intelligence, Anton seems to make of this movement an existential question mark – a metaphysical, almost scientific inquiry into meaning.

My second coalition is that of Angela Hewitt, born July 26, 1958, and Louis Lortie, born April 27, 1959. They belong to the next generation of securely government-funded pianists. This coalition is ultra-Canadian, in that Angela is an anglophone from the Upper Canada city of Ottawa, who grew up in the the spotlight of the English CBC, while Louis is a Québecois francophone, who was from an early age the darling of Radio-Canada (the French half of the CBC).

Angela, now based in Italy and England, records on her favoured Fazioli pianos, known for their deeply resonant sound, one that is also capable of very delicate tone shadings. As such, they offer almost too much tonal choice for a Classical-Era sonata, originally written for a small wooden-framed instrument. It’s a unique struggle to record Beethoven on one, but this is Angela’s area of expertise. I do at times find myself swamped by the sonorities, like listening to a concert in a very echoey hall.

Louis’s version offers a clear and polished delivery in quite a different sound environment from Angela’s. Though, I’d add, for me his pedalling is a bit much. Louis is a terrific – and enormously hardworking – artist, whose recordings of works by composers such as Ravel and Chopin are exquisite. Try his complete Ravel works! However, I struggle to find the voice of Beethoven in his Beethoven recordings. Dare I say this might be a bit too elegant and cool, not quite the rough awkward warm voice I’ve been living with for so long?

You can’t be a Beethoven pianist without giving full respect to my final candidate, Stewart Goodyear, born February, 1978. That’s because he has publicly performed all 32 Beethoven sonatas in one day. Not just once, but five times. People do go on about Yuja Wang performing all four Rachmaninoff Concerti in a day, but Goodyear’s feat is a lot harder. It’s telling that although Stewart did this for the first time in Toronto, his next four such performances were in the USA. While he has received all the attention that Canada and the CBC have to give these days to any classical pianist, it’s just not enough to support a career, as it was in the days of Glenn Gould.

One could question whether the Canadian public (or any public) is best served by trying to sit through eleven hours of increasingly eccentric Beethoven sonatas. Most Canadian pianists who are being hired for concerts these days are making their offerings far, far more pleasing and accessible. But as a Beethoven cycle pianist, I have to give Stewart props for his remarkable tenacity and endurance.

This clip is representative of Stewart’s style as I’ve heard it both live and recorded. He’s a non-nonsense pianist who wastes no time getting to the heart of the structure and presenting it in clear, intelligible terms.

And now, it’s time for some democracy – here’s your Very Model of a Canadian Poll. Vote away!

(Note for non-Canadians: “The Great One” is our nickname for a famous hockey player named Wayne Gretzky, whose reputation among us has recently been sullied by his Trumpian connections. The “tire” pun is an oblique reference to auto tariffs. “Only in Canada, you say? Pity!” is a famous quote from an old Canadian ad for Red Rose Tea.)