Who loves the "Hammerklavier" sonata?

[Quijote]

I tend to avoid saying "I love" such and such a work, but certainly, its complexities challenge me emotionally, intellectually AND physically.

[Johan]

Hammerklavier is in it's totality a thrilling sonata. Love?

To describe - or even to explain - the complex reasons for my liking would lead to a writing ad absurdum.

[Tod]

I hadn't listened to 'Hammerklavier' in a while, but this topic made me put it on repeat...and still it repeats...what an amazing work. I'd forgotten how much it sounds like a precursor to Chopin and Liszt, as do some of the other late sonatas. So many rich harmonies and flowing melodies.

The power of the first movement, the wit of the second movement, the profoundness of the 3th movement and the sheer pleasure of locating the different voices and how they interweave in the last movement. It's a monumental work to which I listen with great love frequently

.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I totally agree with you here.

[AlexOv]

In his lecture series on Beethoven's piano sonatas, Andras Schiff remarked that many people respect and admire the "Hammerklavier", but very few people love it. I don't know if that's exactly true, but I know what he means. It seems that the work is respected more than it is really enjoyed. Do you love it?

I have to say that I do. It is a great work, of course, but more than that I simply love to listen to it and play it (I can't really play it, of course - I just bring it out and play bits of it for fun once in a while). It is certainly the sonata I listen to the most, and maybe even the piece of music I listen to the most. I can just never get enough it.

I have been watching a rerun on tv of a documentary series on jazz music by Ken Burns, and Wynton Marsalis said something in one episode that was quite profound and relevant to this discussion. He said that great art does not come to you. You have to go to it. I think he meant that great art will not be automatically accessible, like water coming out of a tap if you turn it on. I have had to listen many times to the Hammerklavier before it really made sense but now it is in my blood, as it were, like an old friend. I know it. I find that the same is true of parts of the late string quartets. If I listened repeatedly, I grew to know and then to love them.

[Moonscore]

I have been watching a rerun on tv of a documentary series on jazz music by Ken Burns, and Wynton Marsalis said something in one episode that was quite profound and relevant to this discussion. He said that great art does not come to you. You have to go to it. I think he meant that great art will not be automatically accessible, like water coming out of a tap if you turn it on. I have had to listen many times to the Hammerklavier before it really made sense but now it is in my blood, as it were, like an old friend. I know it. I find that the same is true of parts of the late string quartets. If I listened repeatedly, I grew to know and then to love them.

I agree entirely. It took me several listens of things like the Grosse Fugue and Stravinsky's Rite for their beauty to really sink in, but now that they have, they easily stand among my absolute favorites. It seems, with some works, as if the entire purpose of the first listen is to merely plant the seed.