83. A Different Beethoven

Beethoven: Violin Sonata in D Major, Op. 12, No. 1 Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101 When one thinks of Beethoven, the image that springs to mind is usually of the stern, wild-haired man behind such epic works as the fifth and ninth symphonies, or perhaps the avant gardist who wrote those sublimely philosophical final string quartets. But of course, there’s more to Beethoven than that. As Lewis Lockwood and Mark Kroll write in their book on Beethoven’s violin sonatas, “Although this image is meaningful and enduring, it fails to make room for contrasting dimensions of Beethoven’s art that belong to other aesthetic domains—those of grace, beauty, humor, and restraint, which emerge…in the more intimate world of his keyboard chamber music.” In today’s podcast, we’ll delve into that world, first through Beethoven’s first violin sonata in D Major. Written early in Beethoven’s career, and characterized by those qualities of beauty and lightness, the sonata nonetheless contains kernels of the methods that would characterize his later work. Then, we’ll hear Beethoven’s 28th piano sonata, his opus 101. In the final movement of this sonata, Beethoven again employs a device that would become a signature in his later works: a wonderfully intricate fugue.