“Here’s a sonata that will challenge pianists and that one will be able to play in 50 years”: thus Beethoven is said to have written to his publisher Artaria regarding his mighty “Hammerklavier” Sonata op. 106. Given its monumental scale and ...

Composed in 1800 and published as a “Grande Sonate”, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in B-flat major op. 22 marks the end of his first creative period. The only surviving handwritten source is a copyist’s manuscript that served as an engraver’s copy ...

Beethoven’s Sonata in F major op. 54 was written in 1804, just after the highly virtuosic “Waldstein” Sonata and before the “Appassionata” Sonata, and has unjustly stood in the shadow of its predecessor and successor ever since. Its two movements ...

It was not until 1814, five years after the Sonata op. 81 “Les Adieux”, that Beethoven, then at the height of his popularity during the Congress of Vienna, returned to the piano sonata. The highly lyrical Sonata in E minor, the last piano sonata ...

These pieces, known as the Kurfürsten Sonatas, were composed in 1783 while Beethoven was still studying with Christian Gottlob Neefe in Bonn. “He will certainly become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, if he progresses as he started off“, ...

Beethoven’s four-movement Sonata in A-flat major op. 26 belongs to his most popular works. It is dedicated to Prince Lichnowsky, one of his most generous patrons and the dedicatee of, for example, the Grande Sonate pathétique op. 13 ...

If the nickname “Appassionata” was appropriate for one of Beethoven’s Sonatas, it would be for his E-flat major Sonata op. 7 rather than his famous work in F minor op. 57. This was Carl Czerny’s opinion who felt that op. 7 was written in a ...

Composed in 1809–10, Beethoven’s Sonata op. 81a expresses his very personal feelings. He titled its three movements “Das Lebewohl” (The Farewell), “Die Abwesenheit” (The Absence) and “Das Wiedersehn” (The Return) in reference to the hasty departure ...