'Hammer' Time

Completed a series of four programs at my local Nyack Library last night, with pianist Yashar Yaslowitz playing many of Beethoven's most famous sonatas after I screened clips from various documentaries, docu-dramas and Hollywood depictions of the composer.   It was another sellout (as was the first screening of the film on Beethoven's Ninth that I co-produced complete with amazing flash mob).  Last night one of the sonatas was the "mighty" (as it's often called) late Hammerklavier, though the word that occurs to me most is "profound."  Reminded that it holds the single greatest movement in all of the piano reportory, the slow 3rd movement, here from Barenboim--not my favorite version (see: Uchida) but you get the idea... Below that, incredible Raiford Rogers modern dance based on the Hammerklavier and two of the other late LvB sonatas.   Showing how "modern" Beethoven still is.