This work marks the start of Beethoven's "Late Period", when his music took a new direction toward a more personal realm of freedom and fantasy, and, despite the gradual degeneration of his hearing, he moved beyond the Classical tradition into the Romantic. The Sonata demonstrates most especially the contrapuntal challenges he set for himself during his final decade, based on his recent discovery of the music of Bach.
Beethoven himself described this sonata as “a series of impressions and reveries.”Outwardly,Opus 101 manifests the four movements of a ‘typical’ Beethoven sonata, but in its details it becomes anything but ordinary. The gently-flowing melody of the pastoral opening movement unfolds without any marked contrasts. Its reverie is interrupted in the second movement by an exuberant march. The brief, improvisatory third movement is an elegiac adagio that leads--very uncharacteristically--into a restatement of the first few measures of the first movement. The boisterous finale is dominated by a complex fugue, which, as Beethoven himself joked, might have justified nicknaming the work "The Difficult-to-Play Sonata." Masataka Goto
Classical Music | Piano Music
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101
PlayRecorded on 09/18/2013, uploaded on 04/16/2014
Musician's or Publisher's Notes
This work marks the start of Beethoven's "Late Period", when his music took a new direction toward a more personal realm of freedom and fantasy, and, despite the gradual degeneration of his hearing, he moved beyond the Classical tradition into the Romantic. The Sonata demonstrates most especially the contrapuntal challenges he set for himself during his final decade, based on his recent discovery of the music of Bach.
Beethoven himself described this sonata as “a series of impressions and reveries.” Outwardly, Opus 101 manifests the four movements of a ‘typical’ Beethoven sonata, but in its details it becomes anything but ordinary. The gently-flowing melody of the pastoral opening movement unfolds without any marked contrasts. Its reverie is interrupted in the second movement by an exuberant march. The brief, improvisatory third movement is an elegiac adagio that leads--very uncharacteristically--into a restatement of the first few measures of the first movement. The boisterous finale is dominated by a complex fugue, which, as Beethoven himself joked, might have justified nicknaming the work "The Difficult-to-Play Sonata." Masataka Goto
More music by Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Concerto No 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 19, Third Movement (Rondo: Allegro molto)
Sonata No. 32 in c minor, Op. 111
Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101
Sonata No. 32 in c minor, Op. 111
Fantasie in g minor, Op. 77
33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120
String Quartet No. 11 in f minor, Op. 95, Serioso
String Quartet Op. 131
Sonata for cello and piano in g minor, Op 5, No. 2
Sonata No. 5 for Violin and Piano in F Major, Op. 24 "Spring"
Performances by same musician(s)
Hexaméron, Morceau de concert, S. 392
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