The piano sonatas dissected!

[Delirious Lab]

Apologies if this has been posted here before, if so but it's worth mentioning again... Andras Schiff gave a lecture series on B's piano sonatas a few years ago, and all of it can be downloaded from this link:

Andras Schiff: The Lectures

Schiff takes the 32 sonatas apart like so many Swiss clocks and puts them together again... hours and hours of yummy mp3 goodness.

[Peter]

Yes we have had this before, but it is good to be reminded of it - thanks!

[Chris]

Yes, it was these lectures that prompted me to see Schiff live as he was touring, playing the entire cycle. I caught him playing the Op. 31 sonatas and the "Waldstein" - a fantastic evening!

[Fidelio]

Some of you may already know that Jonathan Biss have started the great crusade to record all of the piano sonatas (taking ten years, the first instalment due early next year). His new website (http://www.jonathanbiss.com) has some interesting comments regarding his thoughts on the sonatas. He has also written ‘Beethoven’s Shadow’, part confession, part manifesto, on his attempt to “express what Beethoven’s music means, spiritually and practically, in my life”.

[Peter]

Some of you may already know that Jonathan Biss have started the great crusade to record all of the piano sonatas (taking ten years, the first instalment due early next year). His new website (http://www.jonathanbiss.com) has some interesting comments regarding his thoughts on the sonatas. He has also written ‘Beethoven’s Shadow’, part confession, part manifesto, on his attempt to “express what Beethoven’s music means, spiritually and practically, in my life”.

Thank you Fidelio - that's a very interesting link and I'll have to come back to it again to take more time over it. Just my own point about Op.110 - I've always felt that more than any of the other late sonatas, this one could so easily have been written for string quartet.

[Michael]

Everybody seems to be raving about Opus 110 lately - although that could be my imagination.

I haven't made up my mind about it. It opens with a theme that Beethoven has used at least twice before: in the trio to the second movement of Opus 18 No. 5 and in the middle movement of Opus 30, No. 3 (again the trio).
Maybe that is what is distracting me.

I prefer the two sonatas on either side of it.

[haydnguy]

Apologies if this has been posted here before, if so but it's worth mentioning again... Andras Schiff gave a lecture series on B's piano sonatas a few years ago, and all of it can be downloaded from this link:

Andras Schiff: The Lectures

Schiff takes the 32 sonatas apart like so many Swiss clocks and puts them together again... hours and hours of yummy mp3 goodness.

Thank you, Delirious, for posting that link. I may have just found my new years project!