I've heard stories of Ashkenazy saying it was the one that made the least sense to him too, but you know how verbal stories go sometimes... It's cool to know Richter wrote that down, I was thinking a little hard evidence of musicians saying that would really benefit this video. Thanks.
Deciding the degree of blur was a huge decision for me 🤣 i wanted enough that most couldn't recognize, but enough clarity that the hardcore Beethoven fans would have a shot. Good job!
Op101 is actually a Hammerklavier sonata. That fugue filled with fast double notes and trills is a musical marvel as well as a technical nightmare. Undoubtedly one of the greatest of the 32.
for the last 30 years i've been more and more understanding all Beethoven sonatas, and finally realize that almost all Beethoven sonatas are equally good. I've been practice from op 79 and after that many years now i've leart to play 10-3, 13,22, 27-2, 31-2, 57, 78, 79, 81a, 110 wooo i'd never image i would learnt that much of them. All your Beethoven video really help me for a new thought about these piece. Thank you bro
So glad you enjoyed the video and that is an impressive bunch of sonatas! Every time you start a new Beethoven piece you realize how brilliant he is. It's amazing that he can be consistently so good.
@@ryanabshier Actually I hate you especially you mentioned the three Op 2s are equally good. Now you at least add these Op2s to my to do list now:). Yes how can I just missed these Op 2s.... Oh yes now i completely remembered like 10 years ago, once 2 old guy retired from orchestra (and that retirement also long ago for them then) and asked me to play Beethoven Trio with them. So I agreed to give a try. I just asked them which one we start and they just said we just start from the beginning. Then i reallize we are going to play Beethoven Op 1 No 1....... I don't even know of any composer there is an Opus One exist. But that's an unbelivable good Trio it is. And it's just so Beethoven piece, everything is so perfect. Actually till today I still cannot understand it seems i cannot find any learning curve of Beethoven, his eariest works are already as good as his latest works. (Of course the same as J S Bach) And his framework of all his sonatas are literally same. Thanks Bro again, so love your videos, they just let me have another understanding of Beethoven's work. I started to learn piano when I was 19, already too old for that, my aim was be able to play some Mozart Sonatas that will be it. Now I even played all Mozart sonatas(book 2) after KV330 and one thirds of Beethoven's, of course lot's of others, especially JS Bach. I still cannot really try to learn Liszt but I don't really thing it's a regret (maybe these piece really belongs to concert pianists). Already did 4 Chopin Etudes and I am perfectly fine with that.
I totally agree that Op 101 is incredibly difficult, in a sense the most difficult Sonata, but Hammerklavier is just worse in that it's so freakingly long. The last three are nowhere as difficult. What put me off with this video is that you're using this horrible digital piano.... why? I would have watched until the end with a real piano, but with this clunky sound, no way!
Fair question. Short answer: sound, convenience, money. Long answer: I completely agree with you that a real piano has a much better sound and I would prefer it in my videos. The big caveat is IF it is mic'd properly, and that's where time, convenience, and money come in. There are plenty of UA-cam channels that have the full package. Good voice audio with a good mic on the piano. And "good" is a funny word. Something that can handle the extreme range of the piano while still picking up the talking voice. Unfortunately, maybe UA-camrs who have a grand piano have a terrible sound. A grand piano that constantly clipping, distorting, sounds like it's in a distant room, or (and worst imo) a decent piano but the voice is extremely difficult to hear. The main point of my videos is the talking. I have had videos where I film bits on my grand and I think it sounds pretty good. But that's JUST piano, no talking voice. To properly mic the piano and my talking voice at the same time where both actually sound good is more equipment for me. In the future, hope that I can do that, but for now it's a tradeoff. I agree the look of a grand would bring more a more quality look to my videos. However, a majority of growing channels do this and end up with either a horrible sound on the piano or talking voice. So when I make educational/informational videos I use the keyboard. Complete control of the piano audio track with no interference with my voice. Some big channels (or channels with funding from universities or TV networks) do have great setups. Where the speaker and piano both sound great. No interference or phase distortion or clipping. That's the dream, but not something I have right now.
It's so hard, great job learning it. It's weird, when I played it I didn't know it was considered difficult, so I had the most positive attitude the whole time 😅 But yeah, it's a beast and daunting for me to even bring back the last movement to recital quality.
You know you‘re a pianist when you look at that blurry score in the thumbnail and instantly know which sonata it is, as quickly as you‘d recognize the face of your mother.
But when do you know You're a musician. I can look at all of the Hadyn sonatas and ...just joking. My question is really why does any keyboard music before Handel.Bach ,Rameauand Scarlatti not make sense. Couperin is as foreign as Wuorinen. Balbaye handsome French yes but Froberger and many of the earlier German composers don't stay w/mind.
This is my favorite sonata!! For some reason it's not played lot and doesn't get the recognition it deserves... Too bad i can't play it yet because the last movement is so hard (decided to go with op 31 no 3) :( but i hope i will be able to in the future
I don't entirely know why it's not played more. I feel like it's beautiful, brilliant, and a great listen. I assume top pianists are not afraid of the difficultly, so I wonder if there's more fear of being able to "pull it off" musically.
I really liked this video Ryan. I fell in love with Beethoven Sonatas when I was 15 with Wilhelm Kempff records. It started my love of classical piano. This sonata tends to be overlooked. I'm guilty. But thanks to you, you brought me back to appreciate just how beautiful that 1st movement is. I think I'll go back and practice it. Thanks.
Beethoven casually upgrading the difficulties of his late sonatas with a fugue. Well, at least you can see bringing back the beginning of the first movement throughout a transition or through the piece has stuck around (Liszt Sonata has this with a theme throughout the whole sonata like you mention for the romantic sonatas)
Definitely agree with the caption about the Op. 2 sonatas being harder than many people think. For example, the last movement of No. 2, in which the Mozart-like theme is introduced by progressively more difficult, rapidly-ascending passages. Or the triplets in the first movement. I don't find the first and last movements of No. 3 particularly easy, either.
Sure, it was Tim Ehlen. It looks like he recorded the sonatas from 2009-2014, so when I heard him talk about this he was working on performing and recording his Volume 5 out of 8. Funny enough, he didn't record Op 101 until volume 7 it looks like (though doubtless he had learned it already). Maybe he was avoiding recording it until he felt better about it, lol.
@@guilleminbruno7898 I get a comment like this once in a while and I see where you're coming from. Here's why I do it this way. There are great recordings of this piece out there with no talking (I'd recommend Gilels). I'm not trying to do that. Also, there are "react" video where someone just hits the play button and goes "woah, cool, nice, awesome" while listening to someone else's hard work. I feel like this can be stealing and not adding much value. So I intentionally try to be different from both. But I do play around with the proportion for sure. Slightly more, slightly less.
I played this for my masters graduation concert. It is ridiculously difficult and also beautiful. I said I would take at least a 10 year break from it, but recently I've been thinking of bringing it back, only 10 months later 😅 Altough it would probably be wiser to learn 110 instead.
I've heard that, from No. 28 to No. 32, these are classified into Beethoven's Late Piano Sonatas. Marc-André Hamelin had played three last sonatas in the mid-2000s, and recently he's playing Hammerklavier Sonata (Op. 106). I really hope that he could record all these five Beethoven sonatas and release to the public...!!
But then he'd play it as easily as he pours a cup of coffee 😂 make us all feel bad. But no, that would be incredible! He's one of the best out there and a cohesive set of the last 5 sonatas would be a huge hit.
@@ryanabshier I agree. As he gets old, his musicality also got more matured and profound, and I find his Hammerklavier is one of the great (live) recordings (please don't blindly agree with me, because I'm a huge fan of him (= fanatic bias...?)).
@@ryanabshier I came across a two-hour live Hamelin video which includes his future releases; sadly my dream didn't come true because he only included No. 3 and No. 29 of Beethoven's piano sonatas, which will be released in October this year. But I'm satisfied with it because he did play these two works in the separate recitals.
Interesting. Thanks, Ryan! I’m not a pianist, but as a listener, this is my second favorite of all the sonatas (surpassed only by the Pastoral). I love it so much, and am surprised this is one of the most difficult. I also agree about the first movement being hard to bring off, interpretively.
Thanks for the super! I guess we have similar tastes, Pastoral is one of my favorites too. Definitely in the top 10, such a cool piece. Glad you enjoyed the video and hope to see you around here. Beethoven is my favorite so expect more with his sonatas
Thanks for mentioning that!, I originally was going to say them as well (Waldstein being one of my favorite sonatas for sure). But then I was not sure how many to mention. Those 2 could be harder than some of the last 3. Depending on the pianists strengths and weaknesses.
I've always loved Emil Gilels live performance here on UA-cam. I feel like I've listen to Arraus's recording of it, but it's been a long while. I'm sure he plays it amazingly!
My wife studied under Dr. Tim Ehlen at the University of Illinois. I have his CD recording of this sonata. I've put in on from time to time while playing with my son. According to my wife, Beethoven revisited Bach late in his life and became fascinated once more with counterpoint. I commented that the f-major middle movement was basically Beethoven defining Schumann's style for him. The last movement is just so great. Its subject is so beautifully consonant at the beginning that you just have no idea what to expect - the middle movement is such a subversion - so surely the final movement will not remain so simple so long? It certainly delivers.
The first movement starts on the dominant, avoids the tonic to land on the dominant, then modulates to the dominant for the secondary theme area, then, again starting on the dominant, takes off into a wandering development section, rushes towards the tonic in the recapitulation and seems to miss, goes around again and finally lands in the tonic at the end.
I’m obsessed with my late teacher’s recording of this sonata. Mark Westcott. I didn’t love it as much until I heard his rendition. It made me realize how difficult it is to pull this off, and that I’d been missing the mark with Beethoven. I understood the structure, but not the humanity intertwined with it.
Very true, sir. I do much prefer my real piano to the keyboard, it's basically impossible to actually play it technically on a keyboard and I couldn't imagine getting it good, I've only performed this sonata on a grand piano. For my UA-cam videos I tend to use my keyboard because it's easier to capture audio and for the audience to hear clearly what I'm saying into the mic. I would need higher quality equipment to handle the input of an acoustic piano with a mic as pianos simply generate a lot of sound. But you are correct, it is not ideal.
when I saw the title I though for sure that you where gonna talk about op 7 (his 4th sonata) but no 28 is also fairly difficult and imo a much better piece of music
That would have worked as well. I went back and forth on the tile/thumbnail quite a bit. At one point it was like a million words long 🤣 I finally settled on something shorter and a little more vague rather than an essay. "Listen to and learn about the great Beethoven sonata that is underrated yet still amongst the best and most difficult, in fact considered by some to be......." lol 😆 Thanks for checking it out!
@@ryanabshier I'm a retired orchestra violinist, but I love the piano repertoire very much. That's in addition to organ, opera, and orchestral, of course!
A question regarding neglected Beethoven sonatas: do you agree with me the list should be expanded to 35 and that the Kurfürstensonaten should be regarded as canonical? I think they should and cannot think of any reason not to. They'e full piano sonatas, not dignified sonatinas (like the canonical opus 79) and are actually just very typical examples of piano sonatas from the late 18th century. Were considered fit for publication by Beethoven when he wrote them, and they wouldn't seem out of place at all if included in the canon before opus 2, in the way that the canonical opus 78 and 79 seem oddly out of place sandwiched in between op. 57 and 81a. Fact is, they're piano sonatas. Completed by Beethoven. Published. It's really beyond my comprehension why we still refer to Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas when in reality he completed 35 of them.
Felix Blumenfeld had this "fell in love with this piece" effect on me. A couple of his pieces I've forgotten the number of lol EDIT Etude de Concert Op 24 Two Impromptus Op 45
I always thought it was interesting that Argerich in her adulthood only played this if she played any solo Beethoven. The bagatelles have her and Kovacevich's name on it but we'll probably never hear her in any of the shorter exciting bagatelles.
That was one of Goulds favorites, oddly enough he didnt record it seems he thought after the first part what followed was not up to it. Its my personal favorite, also I think somehow was influenced by Scarlatti Sonata in A major k208, hope you have chance to hear it.
Thank you for this discussion! Definitely one of my favorite Beethoven Sonatas, for me right after op. 109. I appreciate you pointing out the difficulty. I saw some list (maybe by Caleb Hu?) that listed op. 109 as harder, and my reaction was "I could do op. 109 reasonably comfortably with enough practice, but was hanging on by my fingernails when performing op. 101." Have yet to try op. 110 and op. 111, so cannot compare to those, and op. 106 feels out of reach for me. One eminently beautiful and quite playable, and vastly underrated, Beethoven Sonata is the one immediately before, op. 90. Only two movements, and kind of has hints of Schubert to me. Readers/listeners here who find op. 101 too challenging should give it a look.
Caleb Hu lists 111 (not 109) as harder but still at the same level. 110 is probably a bit less difficult than 109 but I'd say both are quite a bit easier than 101/111. But yeah I've seen some absurd lists that put 109/110 both above 101/111 which I can't agree with at all.
@@chwu04-ne2df, thank you! I guess it was some other list (not Caleb's) which put 109 above 101. After this video, I tried sight-reading 111. It didn't seem all that bad, until I got to those nasty trills at the end. They seem quite a bit more uncomfortable than the trills in 109.
Thank you for this video. Although I am pretty familiar with the last 3 sonatas, #28 has completely flown under the radar for me. I didn’t realize until now what an incredible sonata this is. Thank you so much for this video and I look forward to delving into it and getting to know it with the different recordings I have of it. Thank you again! 😌❤
Awesome, so glad to hear that. Yes, it is for some reason not even in the 10 most popular ones, but I think it's amazing. Here on UA-cam there's a really nice live recording of Emil Gilela playing it, I really like that one.
I think Wim Winters and Alberto Sanna are developing the right approach to the sonatas taking them back to their roots as pieces meant for the drawing room or the study. The notion that Beethoven's music needs to be played virtuosically to be appreciated was a notion that developed after his death. Virtuosity really is historical cultural baggage that has accreted on this old music and should be removed for us to hear it clearly again. Aside from the grand sonata, these pieces were meant to be lived with and meant to be as personal and intimate an experience as reading a book. I think we need to reject the syphilitic-madman-God the culture has been in love with and let the human Beethoven speak to us again.
I played this sonata for my BMus final recital. All 4 movements are hard to play, both technically and musically. Second movement is kind of awkward technically, and fourth is hard to learn due to all those parallel fourths and the fugato part, with all those trills. But is 100% worth the effort, it's an amazing and fulfilling masterwork. Should be played much more.
Op 101 underrated? What do you.mean by that? It's widely recognized as a masterwork. And while it's extremely difficult, it's not more difficult than the fugue of op 106 or the variation movement of op 111 or several other movements or sections.
Beethoven couldn't write a fugue to save his life. The fugue-like finales of op 101 and 106 lurch awkwardly along like a jalopy with something broken. They're hard, but not rewarding for performer or listener. Of course a lot of otherwise great composers also couldn't write fugues - Mozart and Mendelssohn come to mind. Handel wrote a couple of great fugues.
In His 14th Quartet, Grosse Fuge and 29th Sonata he more than clearly demonstrates he knows how to write a fugue. Just because it doesn't sound like Bach doesn't mean it's a bad fugue.
Sviatoslav Richter said this was the most difficult Beethoven sonata in his notebooks
I've heard stories of Ashkenazy saying it was the one that made the least sense to him too, but you know how verbal stories go sometimes... It's cool to know Richter wrote that down, I was thinking a little hard evidence of musicians saying that would really benefit this video. Thanks.
When I saw the thumbnail, I instantly recognized it as Beethoven's 28th sonata despite the blur... Maybe I know these sonatas a bit _too_ well...
Deciding the degree of blur was a huge decision for me 🤣 i wanted enough that most couldn't recognize, but enough clarity that the hardcore Beethoven fans would have a shot. Good job!
Me too. The best along with the hammerklavier
Op101 is actually a Hammerklavier sonata. That fugue filled with fast double notes and trills is a musical marvel as well as a technical nightmare. Undoubtedly one of the greatest of the 32.
*29th
It's not that difficult to see
Beethoven's piano fugues are just so amazing and unique
At his time a common opinion was that Beethoven didn´t know how to write a fugue. He was compared to Bach
for the last 30 years i've been more and more understanding all Beethoven sonatas, and finally realize that almost all Beethoven sonatas are equally good. I've been practice from op 79 and after that many years now i've leart to play 10-3, 13,22, 27-2, 31-2, 57, 78, 79, 81a, 110 wooo i'd never image i would learnt that much of them. All your Beethoven video really help me for a new thought about these piece. Thank you bro
So glad you enjoyed the video and that is an impressive bunch of sonatas! Every time you start a new Beethoven piece you realize how brilliant he is. It's amazing that he can be consistently so good.
@@ryanabshier Actually I hate you especially you mentioned the three Op 2s are equally good. Now you at least add these Op2s to my to do list now:). Yes how can I just missed these Op 2s.... Oh yes now i completely remembered like 10 years ago, once 2 old guy retired from orchestra (and that retirement also long ago for them then) and asked me to play Beethoven Trio with them. So I agreed to give a try. I just asked them which one we start and they just said we just start from the beginning. Then i reallize we are going to play Beethoven Op 1 No 1....... I don't even know of any composer there is an Opus One exist. But that's an unbelivable good Trio it is. And it's just so Beethoven piece, everything is so perfect. Actually till today I still cannot understand it seems i cannot find any learning curve of Beethoven, his eariest works are already as good as his latest works. (Of course the same as J S Bach) And his framework of all his sonatas are literally same.
Thanks Bro again, so love your videos, they just let me have another understanding of Beethoven's work. I started to learn piano when I was 19, already too old for that, my aim was be able to play some Mozart Sonatas that will be it. Now I even played all Mozart sonatas(book 2) after KV330 and one thirds of Beethoven's, of course lot's of others, especially JS Bach. I still cannot really try to learn Liszt but I don't really thing it's a regret (maybe these piece really belongs to concert pianists). Already did 4 Chopin Etudes and I am perfectly fine with that.
I totally agree that Op 101 is incredibly difficult, in a sense the most difficult Sonata, but Hammerklavier is just worse in that it's so freakingly long. The last three are nowhere as difficult. What put me off with this video is that you're using this horrible digital piano.... why? I would have watched until the end with a real piano, but with this clunky sound, no way!
Fair question. Short answer: sound, convenience, money.
Long answer: I completely agree with you that a real piano has a much better sound and I would prefer it in my videos. The big caveat is IF it is mic'd properly, and that's where time, convenience, and money come in.
There are plenty of UA-cam channels that have the full package. Good voice audio with a good mic on the piano. And "good" is a funny word. Something that can handle the extreme range of the piano while still picking up the talking voice. Unfortunately, maybe UA-camrs who have a grand piano have a terrible sound. A grand piano that constantly clipping, distorting, sounds like it's in a distant room, or (and worst imo) a decent piano but the voice is extremely difficult to hear.
The main point of my videos is the talking. I have had videos where I film bits on my grand and I think it sounds pretty good. But that's JUST piano, no talking voice. To properly mic the piano and my talking voice at the same time where both actually sound good is more equipment for me.
In the future, hope that I can do that, but for now it's a tradeoff. I agree the look of a grand would bring more a more quality look to my videos. However, a majority of growing channels do this and end up with either a horrible sound on the piano or talking voice. So when I make educational/informational videos I use the keyboard. Complete control of the piano audio track with no interference with my voice.
Some big channels (or channels with funding from universities or TV networks) do have great setups. Where the speaker and piano both sound great. No interference or phase distortion or clipping. That's the dream, but not something I have right now.
The first movement of this sonata is one of the most beautiful movements in all 32 sonatas in my opinion ❤
For sure, such a gorgeous sound and some reason breath-taking moments.
Agreed!!
Nothing compares to Beethoven. Many of his sonatas have been dear to my heart for more than 70 years - independent of their interpreters ...
Thanks for watching the video! I agree, so many of Beethoven's works are magically and memorable. He is my favorite composer.
Great video! I learned this Sonata this year, and the 4th movement with these thirds and fourths on both hands are an absolute nightmare
It's so hard, great job learning it. It's weird, when I played it I didn't know it was considered difficult, so I had the most positive attitude the whole time 😅 But yeah, it's a beast and daunting for me to even bring back the last movement to recital quality.
@@ryanabshier interesting!
Adore this sonata. I especially love how the first movement avoids the tonic for so long - A major is only confirmed late in the movement.
You know you‘re a pianist when you look at that blurry score in the thumbnail and instantly know which sonata it is, as quickly as you‘d recognize the face of your mother.
Hahaha, I know. I should have made it blurrier. Raise the challenge level you know.
But when do you know You're a musician. I can look at all of the Hadyn sonatas and ...just joking. My question is really why does any keyboard music before Handel.Bach ,Rameauand Scarlatti not make sense. Couperin is as foreign as Wuorinen. Balbaye handsome French yes but Froberger and many of the earlier German composers don't stay w/mind.
This is Hammerklavier too :) (The first one of the two).
BINGO!!!! then 101... then the appasionata... then the Waldstein...and 81a....
This is my favorite sonata!! For some reason it's not played lot and doesn't get the recognition it deserves... Too bad i can't play it yet because the last movement is so hard (decided to go with op 31 no 3) :( but i hope i will be able to in the future
I don't entirely know why it's not played more. I feel like it's beautiful, brilliant, and a great listen. I assume top pianists are not afraid of the difficultly, so I wonder if there's more fear of being able to "pull it off" musically.
I really liked this video Ryan. I fell in love with Beethoven Sonatas when I was 15 with Wilhelm Kempff records. It started my love of classical piano. This sonata tends to be overlooked. I'm guilty. But thanks to you, you brought me back to appreciate just how beautiful that 1st movement is. I think I'll go back and practice it. Thanks.
To me Beethoven is the absolute king of classical music I just love all of his piano music he was just a mind-boggling genius
Beethoven casually upgrading the difficulties of his late sonatas with a fugue. Well, at least you can see bringing back the beginning of the first movement throughout a transition or through the piece has stuck around (Liszt Sonata has this with a theme throughout the whole sonata like you mention for the romantic sonatas)
lol, exactly. Late sonatas come equipped with a fugue to ward off too many visitors 🤣
Recently played the first movement of the op 110 for my exams ! It was SO FUN learning it, highly reccomend especially since no one plays it XDDDD
Definitely agree with the caption about the Op. 2 sonatas being harder than many people think. For example, the last movement of No. 2, in which the Mozart-like theme is introduced by progressively more difficult, rapidly-ascending passages. Or the triplets in the first movement. I don't find the first and last movements of No. 3 particularly easy, either.
The first movement is INCREDIBLY challenging emotionally. It has this economical, melancholic, ethereal quality. The world is in these three pages 🥲
Can I ask who was the guy will played all 32 piano sonatas
Sure, it was Tim Ehlen. It looks like he recorded the sonatas from 2009-2014, so when I heard him talk about this he was working on performing and recording his Volume 5 out of 8. Funny enough, he didn't record Op 101 until volume 7 it looks like (though doubtless he had learned it already). Maybe he was avoiding recording it until he felt better about it, lol.
Too much talk, not enough music!!!!
@@guilleminbruno7898 I get a comment like this once in a while and I see where you're coming from. Here's why I do it this way. There are great recordings of this piece out there with no talking (I'd recommend Gilels). I'm not trying to do that. Also, there are "react" video where someone just hits the play button and goes "woah, cool, nice, awesome" while listening to someone else's hard work. I feel like this can be stealing and not adding much value. So I intentionally try to be different from both.
But I do play around with the proportion for sure. Slightly more, slightly less.
I played this for my masters graduation concert. It is ridiculously difficult and also beautiful. I said I would take at least a 10 year break from it, but recently I've been thinking of bringing it back, only 10 months later 😅
Altough it would probably be wiser to learn 110 instead.
Beethoven does that to you "I'll put this away for a bit..." But you know, once you start learning a new one you're always thankful for that as well.
I've heard that, from No. 28 to No. 32, these are classified into Beethoven's Late Piano Sonatas. Marc-André Hamelin had played three last sonatas in the mid-2000s, and recently he's playing Hammerklavier Sonata (Op. 106). I really hope that he could record all these five Beethoven sonatas and release to the public...!!
But then he'd play it as easily as he pours a cup of coffee 😂 make us all feel bad. But no, that would be incredible! He's one of the best out there and a cohesive set of the last 5 sonatas would be a huge hit.
@@ryanabshier I agree. As he gets old, his musicality also got more matured and profound, and I find his Hammerklavier is one of the great (live) recordings (please don't blindly agree with me, because I'm a huge fan of him (= fanatic bias...?)).
@@ryanabshier I came across a two-hour live Hamelin video which includes his future releases; sadly my dream didn't come true because he only included No. 3 and No. 29 of Beethoven's piano sonatas, which will be released in October this year. But I'm satisfied with it because he did play these two works in the separate recitals.
Interesting. Thanks, Ryan! I’m not a pianist, but as a listener, this is my second favorite of all the sonatas (surpassed only by the Pastoral). I love it so much, and am surprised this is one of the most difficult. I also agree about the first movement being hard to bring off, interpretively.
Thanks for the super! I guess we have similar tastes, Pastoral is one of my favorites too. Definitely in the top 10, such a cool piece.
Glad you enjoyed the video and hope to see you around here. Beethoven is my favorite so expect more with his sonatas
Pastorale is so underrated! I'm learning it for a performance in autumn and it's just a treasure chest full of beautiful gems
@@pianoplaynight Yes! There's something about that work that really resonates with me-full of subtle beauties. Best with your performance! 😊
Appassionata and Waldstein are pretty difficult as well
Thanks for mentioning that!, I originally was going to say them as well (Waldstein being one of my favorite sonatas for sure). But then I was not sure how many to mention. Those 2 could be harder than some of the last 3. Depending on the pianists strengths and weaknesses.
0:55. Wow. I had no idea he'd written 106 sonatas....
he wrote 32. The 106 is the opus number and applies to all his works.
@@djehuti3 Sigh. I give up. No one can tell when I'm joking. I suppose that's too much to ask.
My favourite Beethoven Sonata
You and others make this sonata (and other sonatas) hard by taking ridiculously fast tempi! Use early 19th.C tempi not 20/21st.C tempi!
Love this one - thanks for highlighting it!
which are your favourite recording of it? i like claudio arraus a lot.
I've always loved Emil Gilels live performance here on UA-cam. I feel like I've listen to Arraus's recording of it, but it's been a long while. I'm sure he plays it amazingly!
My wife studied under Dr. Tim Ehlen at the University of Illinois. I have his CD recording of this sonata. I've put in on from time to time while playing with my son. According to my wife, Beethoven revisited Bach late in his life and became fascinated once more with counterpoint.
I commented that the f-major middle movement was basically Beethoven defining Schumann's style for him. The last movement is just so great. Its subject is so beautifully consonant at the beginning that you just have no idea what to expect - the middle movement is such a subversion - so surely the final movement will not remain so simple so long? It certainly delivers.
The first movement starts on the dominant, avoids the tonic to land on the dominant, then modulates to the dominant for the secondary theme area, then, again starting on the dominant, takes off into a wandering development section, rushes towards the tonic in the recapitulation and seems to miss, goes around again and finally lands in the tonic at the end.
Enjoyed your talk. Thanks. Saw Barenboim play it in London when his technique was still formidable. He was a bit troubled by that second movement!
I’m obsessed with my late teacher’s recording of this sonata. Mark Westcott. I didn’t love it as much until I heard his rendition. It made me realize how difficult it is to pull this off, and that I’d been missing the mark with Beethoven. I understood the structure, but not the humanity intertwined with it.
This needs to be played on an acoustic piano. The op 101 us my favorite Beethoven Sonata
Very true, sir. I do much prefer my real piano to the keyboard, it's basically impossible to actually play it technically on a keyboard and I couldn't imagine getting it good, I've only performed this sonata on a grand piano.
For my UA-cam videos I tend to use my keyboard because it's easier to capture audio and for the audience to hear clearly what I'm saying into the mic. I would need higher quality equipment to handle the input of an acoustic piano with a mic as pianos simply generate a lot of sound. But you are correct, it is not ideal.
Great job. Which model of digital piano do you use?
my beet5hoven and tchaikovsky lineage teacher says 106 is the 'everest of sonatas' in terms of difficulty
His 23rd sonata is also very difficult and emotional.
How about Moonlight Sonata 3rd movement. Very hard.
Alright, Serkin, Claudio played this and Serkin was weeping while he was playing it
how about the les adieux? i seem to recall going thru the score and thinking "this isn't playable at all".
when I saw the title I though for sure that you where gonna talk about op 7 (his 4th sonata) but no 28 is also fairly difficult and imo a much better piece of music
That would have worked as well. I went back and forth on the tile/thumbnail quite a bit. At one point it was like a million words long 🤣 I finally settled on something shorter and a little more vague rather than an essay.
"Listen to and learn about the great Beethoven sonata that is underrated yet still amongst the best and most difficult, in fact considered by some to be......." lol 😆
Thanks for checking it out!
Beathoven sometimes. Jazzy, Ragtime stylish
I just found your channel, and I'm so pleased! You play beautifully, and explain things in a very clear way. BRAVO!
Thanks! Glad you like it, hope to keep making videos and growing. So glad when you faces find the channel. Do you play?
@@ryanabshier I'm a retired orchestra violinist, but I love the piano repertoire very much. That's in addition to organ, opera, and orchestral, of course!
These late sonatas are where Beethoven steps off the edge of the world into the great Cosmo.
A question regarding neglected Beethoven sonatas: do you agree with me the list should be expanded to 35 and that the Kurfürstensonaten should be regarded as canonical? I think they should and cannot think of any reason not to.
They'e full piano sonatas, not dignified sonatinas (like the canonical opus 79) and are actually just very typical examples of piano sonatas from the late 18th century. Were considered fit for publication by Beethoven when he wrote them, and they wouldn't seem out of place at all if included in the canon before opus 2, in the way that the canonical opus 78 and 79 seem oddly out of place sandwiched in between op. 57 and 81a.
Fact is, they're piano sonatas. Completed by Beethoven. Published. It's really beyond my comprehension why we still refer to Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas when in reality he completed 35 of them.
Felix Blumenfeld had this "fell in love with this piece" effect on me. A couple of his pieces I've forgotten the number of lol
EDIT
Etude de Concert Op 24
Two Impromptus Op 45
I always thought it was interesting that Argerich in her adulthood only played this if she played any solo Beethoven. The bagatelles have her and Kovacevich's name on it but we'll probably never hear her in any of the shorter exciting bagatelles.
BEETHOVEN IS GOD!!👊🏾
I've worked on several Beethoven sonatas, and so far what I've found most difficult is the last mvt of "The Hunt".
How high would u rate moments musicaux no. 4 in E minor by rashmaninoff in the scale of difficulty (also asking u guys)
Op. 22, the third mvmt of Op. 10 # 2 and Op 2 #3 are also all up there in terms of difficulty.
Fugue time! lol
That was one of Goulds favorites, oddly enough he didnt record it seems he thought after the first part what followed was not up to it. Its my personal favorite, also I think somehow was influenced by Scarlatti Sonata in A major k208, hope you have chance to hear it.
Tu trabajo es increíble, muchas gracias. Para mí Beethoven es el más grandioso músico y compositor en la historia.
Thanks for posting me myself. I don't get a lot of chance to play classical piano, but I'm always looking at it to analyze the chord structures
The second movement forecast the Swing rhythm and blue notes in Jazz and pop music
Electronic instruments are great, but this music demands a real piano!
Giltburg rates this sonata highly: ua-cam.com/video/Qihe6utKVHU/v-deo.html
I started playing this sonata a month ago, and I gotta tell you that the last couple of pages are in fact *not* to be underestimated in dificulty
This Beethovan piece is so scary to play for me, thanks Ryan for sharing.
You should mess around with the 1st movement though. I really love it and it's not near of terrifying as the others
@@ryanabshier thanks Ryan, l might try it later
I love all those strange cords and note combinations of the romantic period.
Embracing dissonance is not easy and make it musical is hard
The technically simplest ones are always the hardest ones...
This is not "technically simple" in any way though
Nice!
3:43 - that's the theme from op 126 (number 1 or 5 or 6)
so what number is it?
Thank you for this discussion! Definitely one of my favorite Beethoven Sonatas, for me right after op. 109. I appreciate you pointing out the difficulty. I saw some list (maybe by Caleb Hu?) that listed op. 109 as harder, and my reaction was "I could do op. 109 reasonably comfortably with enough practice, but was hanging on by my fingernails when performing op. 101." Have yet to try op. 110 and op. 111, so cannot compare to those, and op. 106 feels out of reach for me.
One eminently beautiful and quite playable, and vastly underrated, Beethoven Sonata is the one immediately before, op. 90. Only two movements, and kind of has hints of Schubert to me. Readers/listeners here who find op. 101 too challenging should give it a look.
Caleb Hu lists 111 (not 109) as harder but still at the same level. 110 is probably a bit less difficult than 109 but I'd say both are quite a bit easier than 101/111.
But yeah I've seen some absurd lists that put 109/110 both above 101/111 which I can't agree with at all.
@@chwu04-ne2df, thank you! I guess it was some other list (not Caleb's) which put 109 above 101. After this video, I tried sight-reading 111. It didn't seem all that bad, until I got to those nasty trills at the end. They seem quite a bit more uncomfortable than the trills in 109.
mmmm they are not the hardest not even close 🙂
They are not even close? Hmm, which Beethoven sonatas do you think are much harder than the last 5?
Opus 101 also Late Beethoven.
For sure. Got to say I'm a big fan of all Beethoven, but late Beethoven is special.
If that starts simple doesn't 31 too?
Yeah, it does too. But the whole 1st movement of Op 101 stays technically much more approachable than any of the last 4 sonatas' 1st movememts.
Kreutzer...
Thank you for this video. Although I am pretty familiar with the last 3 sonatas, #28 has completely flown under the radar for me. I didn’t realize until now what an incredible sonata this is. Thank you so much for this video and I look forward to delving into it and getting to know it with the different recordings I have of it. Thank you again! 😌❤
Awesome, so glad to hear that. Yes, it is for some reason not even in the 10 most popular ones, but I think it's amazing. Here on UA-cam there's a really nice live recording of Emil Gilela playing it, I really like that one.
Actually, all of the sonatas are top tier (yes, even 19 and 20)
I think Wim Winters and Alberto Sanna are developing the right approach to the sonatas taking them back to their roots as pieces meant for the drawing room or the study. The notion that Beethoven's music needs to be played virtuosically to be appreciated was a notion that developed after his death. Virtuosity really is historical cultural baggage that has accreted on this old music and should be removed for us to hear it clearly again. Aside from the grand sonata, these pieces were meant to be lived with and meant to be as personal and intimate an experience as reading a book. I think we need to reject the syphilitic-madman-God the culture has been in love with and let the human Beethoven speak to us again.
I played this sonata for my BMus final recital. All 4 movements are hard to play, both technically and musically. Second movement is kind of awkward technically, and fourth is hard to learn due to all those parallel fourths and the fugato part, with all those trills. But is 100% worth the effort, it's an amazing and fulfilling masterwork. Should be played much more.
This sonata for a fact cries out for a suitable orchestration.
Op 101 underrated? What do you.mean by that? It's widely recognized as a masterwork. And while it's extremely difficult, it's not more difficult than the fugue of op 106 or the variation movement of op 111 or several other movements or sections.
Beethoven couldn't write a fugue to save his life. The fugue-like finales of op 101 and 106 lurch awkwardly along like a jalopy with something broken. They're hard, but not rewarding for performer or listener. Of course a lot of otherwise great composers also couldn't write fugues - Mozart and Mendelssohn come to mind. Handel wrote a couple of great fugues.
In His 14th Quartet, Grosse Fuge and 29th Sonata he more than clearly demonstrates he knows how to write a fugue. Just because it doesn't sound like Bach doesn't mean it's a bad fugue.
David Anderson couldn't write a fugue to save his life.