LVB250 – IGOR LEVIT ”APPASSIONATA”

Igor Levit is one of his generation’s most important pianists (he was born in 1987) and he regularly appears on all of the major concert stages worldwide. He has performed at Konserthuset Stockholm on several occasions, each time with Beethoven on the programme. When he returns for the major Beethoven anniversary, he will do so emphatically – in eight concerts, he will perform all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.

It is clear that Beethoven was influenced by Mozart in Sonata No. 5 in C Minor. The two likely met in Vienna in 1787 and it is also possible that Beethoven took several lessons from Mozart. This sonata has clear similarities to Mozart’s Sonata in C Minor K. 457. The sonatas of Opus 49 are numbered 19 and 20, but they were composed much earlier. They only have two movements and are intended for amateurs to be able to play them. Sonata No. 22 in F Major has an entirely different character, and it is one of his most imaginative creations, composed for the mighty Waldstein. 

The Appassionata, along with Moonlight Sonata and Pathétique, are perhaps Beethoven’s best-known piano sonatas. The title emerged after Beethoven’s death on an edition for piano four hands. This is passionate and emotional music with violent eruptions. In the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, one critic wrote that Beethoven “has yet again released the evil spirits in a way with which we have already become familiar in his other great sonatas.”