Hammerklavier

Beethoven smashes one piano after another. He shears through keyboards, a peasant scything hay. The composer's fingers listen through touch, they become deeper, more blunted, a vibration of mallets. Frown the brow, push the plow make music drive a steamroller. His apartment is disorderly, tools and equipment are hidden in Dresden figurines, in elderly Delftware, ball-peen hammers crammed into the whittled stems of goose quills. Augers, grinders, and rotary tillers are rendered into themes and motifs. Wrecking crews hum and stamp, tables thump out allegro dissonance. Into this din and demolition comes a heavy sonata the hard-nosed 'Hammerklavier' bulldozing a blunt pathway into cramped 19th century streets, where in the absence of safety barriers, all but one turns a deaf ear.