KRYSTIAN ZIMERMAN ON… BEETHOVEN’S HEARING LOSS

All composers write not for the piano, but for their piano, because they get feedback from that and inspiration from what they hear. For me it was always fascinating to find out what it was that they heard. In the case of Beethoven, it’s far more complicated because of his hearing problem, which is probably completely different from what we imagine. He may have heard things that were not at all what we hear. First of all, an instrument doesn’t exist without an acoustic. And here comes the hearing deficiency of Beethoven: maybe this is the biggest influence of his condition, on the acoustical part.

The acoustical part is responsible, among other things, for tempo. I remember a discussion with Herbert von Karajan when we played some concerts in one hall, then repeated them in Lucerne. He said to me that there was a different reverb in this hall and that he always played faster there. I realised this is absolutely true. In drier concert halls you can use faster tempi because you just don’t have the feedback – the acoustic is not gluing the notes together, there are holes in between and you try to diminish them by just playing slightly faster. I had proof of this in all my recorded concerts: according to the acoustic, the chosen tempo was different.

Now, what does this have to do with

Beethoven? He didn’t hear the reverb; he only heard the ground tone coming out of his piano. He therefore produced the pieces always as if in a very dry acoustic – and this could be the secret of why he had a tendency to take extremely fast tempos. For him, in a way, it was all clear: he was very close to the orchestra, he didn’t hear the reverb of the hall, so nothing was muddled up for him there. Or, if you like, nothing was helped by the acoustic: he couldn’t just swim in the acoustical reverb high that a wonderful concert hall produces. I’m convinced that there is a connection between the two factors: tempo in Beethoven’s pieces and the particular hearing loss he had.