Beethoven, Sonata No 15, "Pastorale"

Although his deafness had already begun to trouble him seriously, the thirty-year-old Beethoven entered the new century, the nineteenth, in high spirits. With his financial problems practically solved, he was encouraged to write to his friend and physician Franz Wegeler: "I can have six or seven publishers or more for every piece, if I choose; they no longer bargain with me—I demand, and they pay—so you see this is a very good thing". But in the same letter, later on, he comes clean about his health: "...my hearing during the last three years has become gradually worse... my ears are buzzing and ringing perpetually, day and night" ... "I lead a hermit's life". 

1801, four sonatas
All in all, it is a golden period and a highly fruitful one. If we only consider his sonata production, the year 1801 saw the birth of no less than four sonatas: the one from opus 26, the two "quasi una fantasia" sonatas from opus 27 (the popular "Moonlight", one of them) and the sonata from opus 28 in D major, called "Pastorale" not by Beethoven but by his publisher, as was customary. (It is still seven years before the symphony of the same name appears, which in this case, it seems, was so titled by Beethoven himself).

Beethoven in 1803

Sonata No 15 opus 28 in D major, called "Pastoral" - the return to the old canons
Dedicated to Count Joseph von Sonnenfels, an "Illuminati" who was Mozart's friend and patron, the piece is usually received with some disdain by audiences and performers. With very little justice, indeed. A weak motivation may lie in its manifest return to the old canons in comparison with the sort of formal liberation that the three preceding sonatas represented.

It turns out that the maestro still had something left to tell us in the four-movement formal scheme of his early sonatas. He did not always have to be an iconoclast. He could also show himself as a creator of simple beauty, calm and quiet, except for the finale, the only truly "virtuosic" movement.

Movements:
00        Allegro: A pedal note on the tonic D will accompany the first 24 measures. And in one                form or another, this sustained bass figure will be maintained throughout the piece.
11:51   Andante
19:57   Scherzo - Allegro vivace
22:39   Rondo - Allegro ma non troppo

The performance is by Daniel Barenboim. The cycle of the 32 sonatas, Berlin, 2005.