I RANKED every Beethoven sonata Best to WORST
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
- In this video I rank every single Beethoven sonata for you from the best sonatas to the worst. Grab some coffee, sit back, and enjoy some Beethoven. Also, this will give you a great place to start if you're looking for some Beethoven to listen to or learn how to play on the piano. Enjoy this Beethoven sonata tier list!
0:00 - Intro
0:25 - Tier List
0:51 - Let's Go!
#classicalmusic #beethoven #piano #bestbeethoven #tierlist
This dude taught me how to play piano for a year or two and now he’s on my UA-cam feed hi Ryan
Hi there. Thanks! You're killing me though, I can't tell who you are from your username. Give me a clue. Hope I taught you well 🤣
@@ryanabshier you did lol I’m still playing it’s Kyra :)
@@Yourmother-ef8gk oh crap, I missed this reply (thanks UA-cam). Hmm, I've taught more than one Kyra, I have a guess which from your profile pic. Give me a hint.
Time stamp (full)
intro 0:00
Tier list 0:25
piano sonata no. 1 in F minor op 2 0:55
2nd movement 1:30
piano sonata no. 2 in A major op 2 2:32
2nd movement 2:52
4th movement 3:30 (wrong notes)
4th movement 3:33 (no mistakes)
piano sonata no. 3 C major op 2 4:08
2nd movement 4:25
4th movement 4:44
piano sonata no. 4 op 7 E♭ major 5:19
2nd movement 5:37
piano sonata no. 5 C minor op 10 6:25
2nd movement 7:06
3rd movement 7:32
piano sonata no. 6 F major op 10 8:04
3rd movement 8:36
piano sonata no 7 D major op 10 8:54 (Ryan didn't play it don't blame him)
piano sonata no. 8 C minor (Pathétique) op 13 9:35
2nd movement (Adagio cantabile) 9:57
3rd movement (Rondo) 10:28
piano sonata no. 9 E major op 14 10:59
2nd movement 11:08
piano sonata no. 10 G major op 14 11:55
piano sonata no.11 B♭ major op 22 12:23 (Ryan also didn't play don't blame him)
piano sonata no.12 A♭ major op 26 12:57
3rd movement (Funeral March) 13:43C
piano sonata no. 13 E♭ major (Quasi una fantasia) op 27 4:27
piano sonata no. 14 C# minor (quasi una fantasia/moonlight) op 27 15:00
3rd movement (Presto Agitato) 15:32
piano sonata no. 15 D major (Pastoral) op 28 16:07
2nd movement 17:28
3rd movement 17:59
4th movement 18:08
piano sonata no. 16 G major op 31 18:40 (Ryan also didn't play it don't blame him)
piano sonata no. 17 D minor (The Tempest) op 31 19:18
2nd movement 19:52
piano sonata no. 18 E♭ major (The Hunt) op 31 20:24 (Ryan also didn't play don't blame him)
piano sonata no. 19 and 20: 21:14 reason: 20:28
piano sonata no. 21 C major (The Waldstein) op 53 21:50
2nd/3rd movement 23:17---23:34
piano sonata no. 22 F major 24:57 (Ryan also didn't play don't blame him)
piano sonata no. 23 F minor (Appassionata) op 57 25:36
piano sonata no. 24 F# major (à Thérèse) op 78 26:33
piano sonata no. 25 G major (Cuckoo) op 79 27:38
piano sonata no. 26 E♭ major (Les Adieux) op 81a 27:49
piano sonata no. 27 E minor op 90 31:34 (Beethoven was completely deaf)
2nd movement 32:16
piano sonata no. 28 A major op 101 33:13
piano sonata no. 29 B♭ major (Hammerklavier) op 106 35:51
3rd movement 36:24
piano sonata no. 30 E major op 109 38:08
2nd movement 38:18
piano sonata no. 31 A♭ major op 110 39:51
piano sonata no. 32 C minor op 111 41:10
2nd movement 41:43
outro 45:02
sorry i may have to stop making it because i have don't have time.
Thanks for checking out the video! Haha, you would have been a legend to get every movement of every sonata, our children's children would have sung songs about you.
thank you and I did all of it.
Thanks
Thanks
31 and 32 in my opinion are two of the greatest piano works ever written. 2nd movement of 32 is absolutely insane in the best way possible. The fact that he wrote such a harmonically rich piece while being deaf is completely incredible.
So true. They are unique in character too. Beethoven's music is simply amazing.
Love - love - love listening to your special comments...I'm sure many are gleaning from your insights!!! Well done!
Thanks so much! And look who has a UA-cam account! I'll be expecting a thriving channel run by you soon 😊
op 31 no 1 is one of his most humorous works
Fun approach - now I'm going to have to listen to them in this order! Periodically I listen through the complete sonatas, usually in numerical order. (At least once I tried to rearrange them more chronologically, but I'm not sure there was much difference.) I'll start at the bottom and work up. I think it will be fun to jump back and forth in time as I move up the tier list. Like you, I love almost all of Beethoven, so I don't think it will be dull to start at the bottom. Thanks for taking the time to do this - liked, subscribed, and shared.
That is a great idea! Hope they get gradually better for you as you go along. But yeah, all Beethoven is excellent. Even the ones I poked a little fun at I still give a C, nothing is on the "bad" spectrum. Listening in order is great too, to see the gradual shift in style.
Thanks for watching and sharing. I really do appreciate it. This was hours upon hours of editing so I am truly thankful for the help getting it out.
Got started today on UA-cam with 19, 20, and 3. 19 is a sweet little piece in the Mozartian manner with Buchbinder, who also plays a mild mannered 20. Lovely tone but a little monochromatic. I hit the jackpot with Michelangeli playing no. 3 - it's magnificent! Nothing wrong with this sonata in the right hands. Check it out.
@@ryanabshier
So glad you put no. 15 in the double S tier! It's one I find myself coming back to the most. Although I will say I'm a big fan of no. 18 also, so I'm sorry to see it got skipped. Otherwise very much enjoyed your video!
Thanks for checking it out, I had a lot of fun making it. I'm sure if I studied 18 I'd like it more, but compared to the other sonatas I've never liked it as much. But hey, it's Beethoven, it's all A or S tier. Glad you enjoyed the video!
the op. 101 is so underrated! It's one of my favorite sonatas, it's just great in every way
For sure! It's beautiful, dramatic, and so unique.
Great Video man!
Appreciate the effort. Op109 is a personal favorite.
That is a killer sonata (obviously I think that from my rating, haha). But man, just can't ever process how good those last 3 sonatas are.
Thanks for checking it out!
Great overview walking through all of these! Love hearing so many examples of them. Opus 109! 😊
Op 109 is a great one. I mean, they're all great, but that is a great great one. Thanks for watching!
@@ryanabshier And all the jazz moments are great too as they pop up in pieces!
@@RootsMusic88 that could be a whole video, when Beethoven plays jazz
@@ryanabshier Jazz moments in classical music would be a great video!
@@RootsMusic88 any suggestions from everyone of some good examples?
You explained the poetic background of 81a and then said you the rest is fine 😭 81a is in my eyes one of the absolute greats. Incredible balance of movements and it tells an easy to understand story which you hear: the farewell, the absence and the arrival
Great tier list, very well done! Thanks for the video mate
Trust me, I want to like 81a too, soo badly 😅 But I just don't get into it, I envy you!!!
Thanks, it's great to hear people are enjoying it.
I really loved your take on sonata 15, I thought I was the only one who thinks it's absolutely incredible :) @@ryanabshier
Great video! No 30 op 109 is my favorite. And I have noticed that some other commentators say the same. But I want to move no 29 op 106 to level SS. The slow movement! It takes you through the suffering of this world to a better world...
How UA-cam just recommend this video now? That is amazing content thank you!
Thanks! Means a lot. It tough to get UA-cam to show around videos. Super glad you like them.
Thanks!
Thanks so much for the support!
I completely agree with putting the 15th in the top tier. Its 4 movements basically make it a symphony for piano and I greatly enjoy playing it myself. Full of memorable tunes, rich textures, and surprising but entirely logical rhythmic patterns.
no explanation for downgrading op.31 no. 3 - but still amusing. What keyboard are you playing on?
Yeah, not every sonata got the long explanation due to the video being super long already. Glad you enjoyed the video!
The keyboard is a Yamaha P-70. Someone gave it to me a few years ago. It's around 20 years old. Honestly, it's not great sound wise in person or touch, but the audio out jack sounds fine so it's perfect for what I need it for. The real pianos are just so hard to work with because of camera space and simply being too loud. So it's a much simpler setup to use the keyboard and I think the sound I get is pretty good.
25:35 the left hand should be an octave lower, which makes it sound even more awesome! :)
Nice effort! When doing such a big task as rating all the sonatas, there have to be some things that fly under the radar. I think that if you analyze the Op. 22 sonata more, you might realize that it's one of the most perfectly written out of all the earlier sonatas. The same goes for the Op. 31 no 2 finale, which you didn't really talk about, but is (imho) the most perfectly written Beethoven movement up until that point
Regarding the thought of Beethoven dying after finishing the last sonata, it indeed went differently: He instead discovered that the string quartet is an even more suitable form for what he wanted to express, so he switched to it. His late quartets can therefore be considered the continuation of where he left off with the late sonatas, and they are generally considered as Beethoven's ultimate achievement (especially with Op. 131, which Beethoven himself regarded as his most perfect work)
I have a hard time connecting with Beethoven. I feel Chopin and Schubert in my heart and some other composers that aren't Beethoven I really enjoy. But I could never really let Beethoven in. I can enjoy Beethoven if I really dig into the music, but I can't do that myself if the piece isn't assigned by my professor. Some of his symphonies I grew up listening to, and even got me into music. But anything else that aren't like the last five or so sonatas, I just cant bring myself to listen to or care for. What about Beethoven's music grabs you over other composers? What do you listen for that grahs you in?
For me, it's multiple things:
1) You can hear the human struggle in Beethoven more than anyone else. Writing beautiful melodies didn't come as naturally to him as it did to Schubert, but he still manages to write melodies which on paper shouldn't even sound good (often lacking the elegant logic, the motion in seconds, etc). I believe that he'd get stuck writing a clumsy melody but then work so hard to ultimately find the only way out of the mess he created that the melody ends up sounding nice
2) His late period (late sonatas and especially string quartets, which continue where he left with the sonatas) contains as divine music as anyone has ever written, on par with Bach
3) His middle period is so great that even if there were no late period, he'd still be considered as one of the very greatest composers. Like, listen to the finale of his 4th piano concerto; there's not a single section that doesn't sound absolutely glorious
4) Listening experience improves with some historical context: He is likely the single most influential composer in the music history; he basically invented romanticism, and he managed to transcend even that in his later pieces (e.g. his Grosse Fuge is a piece that is the whole century ahead of its time)
5) The way he manipulates large-scale structure to create dramatic effect is unprecedented. In the Op. 110 sonata, he introduces themes in the first two movements that actually become relevant only in the third movement, in which he uses different forms as a means to advance the narrative: He clashes arioso representing despair and fugue representing hope to reach the chorale using the fugue theme to represent triumph of hope over despair. This is obviously a very different approach to writing compared to Chopin and Schubert, so you must treat it that way and listen to it from a different perspective in order to connect with it
No way you put No. 18 E flat in B tier! Like that chord start is mindblowing and also you get little pre-Wagnerian moment from that A flat minor part. 2nd movement is my favourite Scherzo with that bass. 3rd movement is the last menuetto he wrote and the last movement kinda jazzy. So I would put the sonata up to S+ tier! (Also S+ sonatas are Waldstein and op. 111). I would move No. 7 sonata higher.
Finally, someone else who loves the hammerklavier 3rd movement 🤩🤩🤩
Oh man, it's insanely beautiful. Like the 1st movement is one of the great sonata that exists, but that 3rd will touch your soul.
@@ryanabshier I agree. Still don't understand how it's not in the very top tier, considering the madness that follows in the 4th movement is one of the most unique things ever written
Good list! I’m learning op 2 no 2 rn
Thanks! How long have you been working on it? Such a great sonata and much more challenging then many expect.
great video
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
Hello! Legit ranking. I would like to point at the finale of the op. 2 no. 1 played by Richter 1976 in Moscow (uploaded by truecrypt) which shows its theatralic and vocal style in a perfect way (he plays it at at very fast pace which confuses at the beginning) and also Sokolovs op. 7 1990 in Moscow (uploaded by ADGO). Best regards from Germany, Giacomo.
Hallo, thanks for checking it out and the recommendation. I'll check out that recording and give it a listen.
The tempo of that slow movement is a big issue in interpretation, so I'm curious what he does. I know I like to start it waaaay to slowly then regret it as I go along, haha.
@@ryanabshier With pleasure! I really would appreciate if you would write me your thoughts.
love sonata no 11 personally, the first theme is just so fun and sparky and always catches me immediately
Wow, what a great and fascinating video!
This is of course subjective but a few things I would have ranked differently:
1) 3rd sonata would be on the higher spot (someone, I think it was Andras Schiff, compared parts of this sonata to Beethoven's future piano concertos);
2) sonata no 13 - the last movement is one of my favourites - so I'd rank this higher as well;
3) for some reason I'm not a big fan of Waldstein sonata (no 21).
All other sonatas - I think I agree:)
For some reason I think the only sonata I am the least familiar with is sonata no 28 and thanks to your video I now totally discovered this piece!
Thanks for watching and I'm glad you liked it. Do you play piano as well? Yeah, a lot of subjectivity, but hope it's fun to hear tons of Beethoven all at once whether or not everyone agrees with the rankings.
Interesting, you know, the wide range of techniques in the 3rd sonata do remind me of the 3rd and 5th concertos. Concerto passages require a lot of volume so some patterns work better than others. I should look into that.
Hope you fall in love with No 28, one of the greatest pieces. It's so unique compared to the other sonatas as well.
@@ryanabshier I play the piano a bit - I'm about 15-20 years self-taught.
@@silverteinbas9485 awesome! What kind of pieces have you studied/what's your level. Hope the videos are fun and helpful.
My personal favourite is the No.5, especially the first movement
Very cool. I love the amount of drama, but also the happy really charming, happy 2nd theme.
Don't get how you don't get Op. 81a, but respect your opinion and appreciate your sharing it. Hey, I never got the Apassionata as much as I felt I should have. Yes, I love the Apassionata--- but not like Op. numbers 53, 81a, 106, and 109. Oh, and Op. 111 can be thrown in their too as being super great.
7th sonata has insanely good 2nd movement. I myself consider it one if the best of all of them
I learned No. 9 and am currently learning 31 - definitely agree with the placement of 31 but I personally would give 9 a B since it’s a really solid example of the sonata allegro form at its most formulaic imo
Tho I haven’t heard them all so I might be biased lolol
number 3 and 7 are 2 of my favourites. Richter does great versions (on yt prob) my teacher is from Beet's lineage. I do x3 or x4 Beethoven Pastiches on my channel you may like. My faves are - 1,3,7,8,21,23,31,32 - and my fave composer - Schubert.
Agree with most of your rankings. I'd swap No. 15 and No. 17 though. 17 has always been among my favorites while I never found 15 to be that interesting. My top 3 would be: 30, 31, 23.
Thanks for checking it out, glad we agree on a lot. It's unbelievable how good the last 3 sonatas are, all in a row.
I'm finally glad you ranked the 1st sonata A, but I would have ranked the tempest A as well, and I think that the op 49's are worthy.
Thank for the video :)
I love them all - they all have their place. Tempest/Waldstein and #32 probably top the lists but slow movement Hammerclavier is just incredible - still trying to love the fugue but sticking with it (as a listener - same with Grosse Fuge). Like #3 a lot more than you.
You're out of your mind with #13 which is one of my favorites and the 1st movement is the least of it. The 2nd movement is a banger, 3rd is gorgeous, and the last has that exuberance only Beethoven can achieve with a call back to the 3rd movement. WAY better than #15 (which I play).
👏👏👏👏
Thanks 😊
❤
🙂
Disagree with some of the choices. The 11th sonata is very worthwhile (even Beethoven himself liked it the most at the time of its writing), the 7th has fantastic 2nd mvmt., for the 29th you didn't even mention the finale fugue, which I rank as highly as the 3rd mvmt., and 31st should be SS tier, it's my personal favorite of the sonatas.
Good tier list, I just disagree with seeing n°7 so low, speaking about 2nd movements that one is amazing, and for me the rest of the sonata would be at least tier B
sonata no17 3rd movement on my opinion deserves s or ss its very well balanced, elegant and a bit angry
Good point. I thought when I made the list 17 would get some pushback. I mean, they're all great, but this one just got pushed down by sonatas I like more.
@@ryanabshier You CAN'T put 17 and 14 in that positions. Are you mad? Insensible?
@@jayantagiovanni agreed, sonata no 21 deserves its spot tho
@@jayantagiovanni also i think sonata no 19 needs a spot in s or ss
Liked and subscribed! Just when I was getting tired with chopin. I find this 🥹
Awesome! Glad you enjoyed it. Beethoven is incredible, so hope you found a few new pieces to listen too. Which ones were your favorites?
Chopin is great too, I should do a nocturnes tier list. Love the nocturnes.
We’re complete opposites about the 2nd movements. I find most of them tedious.
Haha, I had a friend once that loved sonatas without a slow movement, still makes me smile. Just so different. However, the ones I have personally studied more, I fall in love with the fast movements too.
What are your favorites? Do you play piano as well or in it for the listening?
@@ryanabshier yes, I play, although I studied organ in college more than piano. Pathetique is probably my favorite Beethoven sonata, because I was obsessed with it as a kid, and its second movement is gorgeous.
Part of my disinterest is the dotted-eighth sixteenth figure just feels out of place at an adagio tempo, and Beethoven loves them so much. Although it’s really effective in the opening of Pathetique, so obviously there are times when I like it. Idk. I think I just prefer something more melodic at a slower tempo.
@@JoshuaWillis89 I took some organ lessons in college and just embarrassed myself a bunch, so similar to piano and so not at the same time.
I see what you mean about the dotted eighth-sixteenth note figure. To our modern ear and even compared to music 50 years after Beethoven they can seem out of place. So fast in a slow movement. I mean, I obviously like them, but it is different than what we're used to.
16 is great! Its a comedy! Lol and can't write in G?!
The 4th concerto disagrees not to mention Rage over a lost penny 😂
Great vid! I agree with pretty much all the placings!
Hope you do a mozart sonatas too!😊🎹🎶💖
9, 10, and 11 are my favorites, too bad you put them all in C tier.
I could for sure. Like I mentioned, if I was to study any one deeply I'd fall in love. Also, C tier for Beethoven is B or A for any other composer. I basically love all 30 of the sonatas (not counting the Op 49s), but I tried to rank them compared to how much I like other Beethoven sonatas.
Rank every Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody
diabolical rankings
Why the hunt C tier? You brushed over it so quickly like it was nothing
Waldstein!
My favorite! Such an incredible sonata in every way.
I like the two or three first and the 4 last sonatas. The rest is pretty uninteresting to me
Your tastes are very eccentric. Specifically, you clearly are more interested in the slow movements than other parts. You're dismissive of some movements without any analytical reasons whatsoever. Well, this effort is not horrible. One thing which would really help is to show where the commentary on each sonata begins. Nobody wants to watch the entire video but I'm sure many people would like to check out what you say on particular sonatas
Hi Mark, thanks for checking out the video and sharing your thoughts with some detail (much more insightful than negative or positive 2 word comments). Couple thoughts I had while reading. I basically love all Beethoven with only a few exceptions, so I mention in the video the rankings are relative to other sonatas. So many of the low ranking pieces I dismissed I think are actually good, but in order for the rankings to mean anything I wanted to fill out the tier list (if everything was A or S the video wouldn't mean much). With that in mind I think my top couple tiers are full of basically his Beethoven's most popular pieces, with a few exceptions. So I guess I feel like my tastes are maybe too normal at times. If I was putting Op. 10 3 in S tier while Appassionata was D tier, that'd be more alarming I suppose.
As far as quickly dismissing some pieces without much explanation. Yup, that is for somewhat the reason you mentioned. The raw footage for this video was hours long, so it took massive cuts to bring it down to the length it was. If every sonata even got a few minutes of time it would be overwhelmingly long. That scared me.
However, to your last point "nobody wants to watch the entire video", I've found the opposite to be true. I've been shocked by the positive feedback and stats on this video. In fact, it's basically outperformed any video I've ever done and many people watch the whole thing. Like you, the length scared me (that's why I didn't explain every sonata in detail), but a lot of people seem interested in hanging out for a while and listing to Beethoven love. So yeah, I'm still discovering what people want to watch on UA-cam, but in retrospect I think I could have left in more explanations, made the video an hour, and that might have been even better. It's a tough balance, some audience wants quick facts, and some want listening material (more like a podcast).
Thanks again for checking out the video! Do you play piano?
@@ryanabshier I play the piano. I'm an advanced amateur and can play some Chopin etudes. I've spent more time on the WTC than anything else. I can play most of the fugues but know fewer preludes. My most ambitious venture was working on the Hammerklavier fugue with two different teachers. The second one showed me some nice fingerings, including switching some notes to the other hand for clarity in passage work
Having an SS tier defeats the point of having an S tier. On Beethoven’s high standards, several of these pieces belong in a D or F tier, and even if they didn’t, the SS still makes no sense. This is the same concept as rating things 11/10 and thinking you’re being really profound, when actually you’re just ruining the rating scale. The point of having an S tier at all above the normal scale of ABCDF is to acknowledge things that transcend our ability to rate, where the word “perfect” doesn’t do justice and all we can say is “Superior”. That is already venturing into “11/10” territory so the SS is redundant.
All that aside, most of your rankings are good. Refusing to rank Op. 49 is good as Beethoven should not be judged by those pieces at all (nor would he want to be). I agree with sonatas 3, 9, 10, and 16 at the bottom. A few disagreements:
- Sonata 18 is a middle period standout with tons of character and is in B’s top half. Disappointing you ranked it low and gave no explanation. Why don’t you like it much?
- I like Sonata 15, but it honestly belongs nowhere close to 21 and especially to the last 5.
- Call me a snob but I really view sonatas 30 and 32 as the clear best pieces here. Their spiritual depth and economy outstrip even sonatas 31 and 28, which I put 3rd and 4th. Sonata 30 is the greatest sonata ever written and 32 is flawless save for the first movement’s ending and the beginning of the exposition. Again, I respect and mostly agree with your ranking, but those two belong way above the other “SS” selections in my opinion.
Sorry you feel so strongly, haha. It's really just for fun, hope you got the enjoyment vibe from the video, hope people is general can just sit back and enjoy a celebration of Beethoven. And it's an honor to Beethoven who is my favorite composer. It doesn't ruin the ratings however. SS is higher than S, S is higher than A... So the rating is still fine and in order, just shifts everything down. Besides, S ruins the rankings too, because A should be the top until S came along...
@@ryanabshierYea it doesn’t ruin the ratings, I agree, and I still enjoyed the video. After you replied I edited my comment with agreements and disagreements.
You cheat with two hands for the thirds in the sonata? Do you teach that?
I hope so, haha. I'm a not exactly sure which measures you're referring to. Do you mind giving me a measure number or timestamp for the video?
You CAN'T put 17 and 14 in that positions. Are you mad? Insensible? Do you reject their intensity and drama? I can't believe what you did
Waldstein double s, ah yeah bro!
Waldstein is simply one of the best. Have you played it?
I'm diligently refining the first movement, which is intriguing due to its various renditions of the same melody. I'm quite pleased with my progress on the first five pages and the concluding one, but I still need to polish the intervening sections. My plan is for me to handle the first part, while a friend covers the second and third parts. In addition to this, we have some solo selections and four-handed pieces at the ready. Sadly, the pandemic halted our concerts, and many friends left the music scene to pursue different careers, myself included. Nevertheless, revisiting this piece feels like a gentle nudge towards reigniting our musical journey. Thanks for asking! :)@@ryanabshier
Sounds so fun. Good luck working through it. I find the 2nd page, and the 2nd page of the development to be the hardest for me (the arpeggios in both hands part). But you know, every page is pretty hard 😅
The waldstein is the greatest sonata in the literature
Can't argue with that. I know Appassionata fans might have a thing or two to say about that, but I love every second of Waldstein. Simply unbelievably good (I think I gave Appassionata the top rating too, though, but I do prefer Waldstein).
Beethoven never sounded like Mozart ever, not even in his early music. The first sonata's 2nd movement sounds like nothing like Mozart. Beethoven never had grace and great melodic writing, period. And Mozart and Beethoven write in a different idiom. They both had very very personal styles.
For me, Beethoven's 2nd movements are extremely tedious and I tend to adore slow movements from all eras.
This is a really nice video though.
You have beef with a 200 year dead pianist from Germany
@@crappyanimations9992 I absolutely do!
I agree, the Pastoral sonata is an absolute joy