Tengstrand has taken on one of the great challenges for a pianist — performing all 32 of Beethoven's sonatas in chronological order. Photo: Julien Bourgeois

Seated before a vast, gleaming Steinway grand piano, Per Tengstrand runs both hands through his hair and gazes skywards as if seeking extra stamina for the task ahead. As the first chords of Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata fill the intimate concert hall, it’s as if a spell has been cast over the audience. One hardly dares breathe, let alone move, for fear of breaking the spell.

41-year-old Tengstrand has embarked on an ambitious, testing and emotionally-draining series of recitals which will see him playing all of Beethoven’s 32 sonatas in chronological order.  Having achieved the feat with critical acclaim in Sweden, he now prepares to perform the masterpieces in Paris.

The Swede lives and breathes the sonatas. “I cannot switch off,” he admits after a performance in Helsingborg, sitting in the lobby of a nearby hotel. “When we’re finished here I will go to a theater in Malmö where my piano is, and just like last night I will practice until four in the morning.”

Growing obsession

He has developed something of a love/hate relationship with the sonatas, which he has spent tens of thousands of hours practicing. “It’s a lot of fun, it’s filled with joy, but you do look forward to the day when that last note is played,” he grins.

You cannot doubt his passion for these pieces, written by Beethoven over a period stretching from 1795 to 1822. Seated at the piano at Helsingborg’s Dunkers Kulturhus, where the backdrop to the stage is the freezing black waters of the Kattegat Strait dotted with the lights of departing ferries, Tengstrand looks at times ecstatic, at times shocked by the power of the music.

“Some music, some pieces by Mozart and Grieg for example, give you time to relax. But Beethoven? Never,” he says. “Even in the moments when it should not feel tense, the mental focus has to be 100 percent, and that is exhausting. In every intermission I’m drained.”

Despite the grip the sonatas have on him, Tengstrand’s eyes light up at the mention of the German composer. Beethoven is clearly still very much alive to him; indeed, he talks about him in the present tense.

“There is so much more to Beethoven than the picture many people have of him as this angry, bitter, heroic person. I think he’s much more like us. He likes to have fun, he is constantly in love with women and he is constantly very sad that they reject him. He brings to his sonatas all aspects of being human.”

The Beethoven sonatas demand complete focus from the first to the last note. "In every intermission I’m drained,” says Tengstrand. Photo: Julien Bourgeois

Precocious talent

Growing up in Växjö in the south of Sweden, Tengstrand started playing the piano aged six. He was encouraged by his mother — a piano teacher — to practice for 45 minutes each day.  “I was never really permitted to lose interest,” he says with a laugh. “Of course today I'm incredibly grateful for that.”

His precocious talent soon became obvious and before long he was winning talent shows. But at this age he still did not appreciate the music he was performing. “To be honest I think I appreciated the feeling of being able to play it much more than the music itself,” he says.

But by his early teens the music had started to make sense to him, to touch him on a deeper level. “I really got into the music. It opened up,” he says. “At that time I started practicing six hours per day, and no one ever had to tell me to practice again.”

Tengstrand studied in Malmö, Geneva and at the Paris Conservatory, where his graduation performance made the audience break a 200-year-old ban on applause. In 1997 he won the Cleveland International Piano Competition, and among numerous prizes and awards has been decorated by Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustav for outstanding service to the arts.

Tengstrand does not expect his complicated relationship with Beethoven to end anytime soon. He has started recording all the sonatas — all nine volumes worth — and besides the Paris recitals has more planned for Sweden later in the year. “I think this Beethoven thing is going to be in my life for a few years yet,” he says. And with that Tengstrand heads off into the darkness for another night of practicing.

David Wiles

David Wiles is a British journalist living in Sweden. He retired from music at the peak of his career, aged 13, having attained the dizzy heights of second tuba in the school orchestra.

The author alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in this article.