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.

Friedrich Kuhlau, Sonatina Opus 20 No 1

After slipping on the icy streets of Lüneburg in northern Germany, the future German composer and teacher Friedrich Kuhlau went blind in one eye when he was only seven years old.
The family had only been there for a short time and was forced to move to a new place of residence from time to time because the father, a musician in a military band, had to follow his garrison when it was relocated.

A remarkable pianist

Born in 1786 in Uelzen, near Hanover, he finished his schooling in Brunswick at fourteen. But it was in Hamburg that he began to study piano and composition. There he composed his first works: some songs and chamber music.

And despite his early disability, by 1804 he had become a remarkable performer on the piano. Six years later, he would earn his living by giving recitals in Copenhagen, where he had fled from the Napoleonic troops that ravaged part of northern Germany in those years. He lived there until his early death in 1832.

Meeting Beethoven

Seven years earlier, in 1825, he had had the opportunity to meet Beethoven in Vienna. A great admirer of the master, after befriending him, he devoted himself to the task of making a good part of his work known in the musical circles of Copenhagen. The maestro must have been very grateful, presumably, first of all, because Beethoven was already old and had only two years left to live.

Friedrich Kuhlau (1786 - 1832)

Sonatinas, the pedagogical work

Kuhlau was a prolific composer, mainly of operas, chamber music and works for flute (the latter demanded by the economic contingency – in every house there would be a flute, we presume). Nevertheless, today he is mostly remembered for his piano works, which are highly pedagogical in value, including a concerto for the instrument. His sonatinas are the most recorded, and what we can most successfully listen to in encores. Not very demanding, they are an excellent ground for preparing the major challenge of the great sonatas, those of the maestro he admired, for example.

In a rendition by the Japanese pianist Mitsuro Nagai, the Sonatina No. 1 from opus 20, in C major, is presented here. Its eight minutes duration includes three sections: Allegro - Andante - Rondo (allegro).