Beethoven 32 – Over the year 2020, I will be learning and filming all 32 Beethoven sonatas. Subscribe to this channel to follow the project, and visit [ Ссылка ] for blog posts and listening guides to each sonata.
Similar to the trios Op. 1 and the sonatas Op. 2, it's the third work of the sonatas Op. 10 – the sonata No. 7, in D major – which Beethoven intended as the high point of the trilogy. He returns there to the expanded, four-movement structure of his first four sonatas, and abandons – perhaps with the exception of the finale – the concise, sometimes even abrupt manner of composition he used in the fast movements of sonatas Nos. 5 and 6.
If we were to judge this sonata by its fast movements – inventive, fresh, brilliant and imaginative, assured, full of humor and surprises – it would feel as a natural development and intensification of a musical path Beethoven followed in his earlier works. But Beethoven went not a step, but a leap forward in the second movement (6:55) – perhaps the earliest undisputed mature masterpiece in his output.
This movement, a great tragic utterance, shows Beethoven's understanding of the human psyche and soul on an incredibly intuitive level; his fearlessness in presenting emotion so raw, so naked; and the sheer compositional and musical mastery he commanded in capturing this emotion in notes. From the first bar, there is an unadorned sincerity to the music which catches one's breath – I couldn't think of a bigger and less expected contrast to the fun-filled ingenuity of the opening movement. This music for me is both an embodiment of loss, despair and resignation and a show of great empathy from Beethoven to those who have experienced these emotions.
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