♫ That 90 second period – that obedient B flat major second theme group – turns out to be very much a respite. Because unsurprisingly, this titanic movement gets the titanic coda that it needs, really. With the hugeness of its ambition – revealed from its first two notes, and confirmed over and over and over again – it would be very unsatisfying for the movement to come to an end without a coda providing a summation both bold and heroic. This coda is launched by a passage that is as craggy and unwieldy as anything in the movement. A series of broken octaves from the tail end of the exposition ♫ is expanded from just a handful of bars into an off-the-leash rant of almost triple its initial length, constantly modulating, and with sforzandos on each half bar giving the music an extreme stubbornness. ♫ That…hurricane…has taken this coda to a rather grim place, Beethoven sustains it, by giving us a version of the closing theme in which there is not merely a suggestion of minor – now, when it begins, it is well and truly IS in minor. ♫ You can hear that underneath the melodic line is a constant juxtaposition of B flat and C flat – that’s B flat and B, just spelled differently. ♫ It is a terse, anxious summation of the conflict that has permeated the movement as a whole… …a conflict that is, necessarily, resolved. The continuation of that phrase moves it back into the major. ♫ You can hear that once we’ve settled in major, and that middle voice is no longer playing a half step, he speeds it up to a trill. ♫ Now that this voice isn’t playing that most significant of the piece’s intervals, Beethoven doesn’t need us to hear it with the same kind of clarity. Having left the minor mode in favor of the major, Beethoven is ready to move this wild-eyed coda towards a real conclusion. ♫ But in spite of this triumphant sequence of events, the dark clouds have not all been removed: the final moments of this movement AGAIN feature a half step in the bass. ♫ This half step has a very similar function to the previous one: it takes one of the themes of the piece – in this case the first – which might otherwise seem predominantly heroic, magestic, and darkens and complicates it. ♫ Given how BIG that coda is, and how much of it hovers anxiously between major and minor, how destabilizing that is, that conclusion ♫ – that's VERY abrupt. The abruptness makes it exciting and dramatic, of course, but I think it also makes it feel inconclusive. Even having played the piece many times, I’m still always a bit shocked that the movement is over so suddenly. And if you have NOT heard the Hammerklavier, have not heard OF it and don’t know what’s coming, I think that this bolt-from-the-blue ending, with its lack of true harmonic or emotional resolution, will give you the feeling that however immense the movement we’ve just heard might be, it is ultimately just a prelude to what’s coming. And make no mistake: this movement IS immense. It is not notably long, but its extraordinary intensity, and the complexity with which it treats those tiny motivic kernels makes both the pianist and the listener feel that they’ve been put through the wringer. And we’re just getting started.
