Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 29 & 32

Later Beethoven – Concentrated Power When Beethoven’s Opus 106 appeared in the autumn of 1819, the composer and publisher knew exactly what they were expecting from those interested. “Now I am writing a sonata that is to be my greatest,” Beethoven told Carl Czerny shortly before – and was already right about the scope: a piano sonata, whose performance lasts almost 40 minutes, has never existed before … With immense technical demands and inaccessible to domestic music-making, Op. 106 was not publicly enforced until 1836 by Franz Liszt … Was the Sonata Opus 111 (published in 1822), as Thomas Mann had lectured in Doctor Faustus, really meant to be the last? There are good reasons for doubting this: Beethoven worked on opp. 110 and 111 at the same time and the manuscript came to the publisher rather by chance later, the work in minor is in the middle in important groups of three (opp. 31 and 59) and the final coronation often falls to a fugue ..