LvB250 – IGOR LEVIT ”WALDSTEIN”

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. 

The introductory theme of Sonata No. 1 rises with the speed and lightness of a rocket. This particular approach to composing a theme is often called a Mannheim Rocket – an ascending broken chord at a high tempo. Beethoven dedicated the sonata to Joseph Haydn, who had been his teacher for several years in the early 1790s.

Beethoven did not want to become stuck in predictability and in Sonata No. 12, he experiments with new forms. The third movement is a funeral march that stylistically paves the way for the mighty funeral march of the Eroica Symphony the following year. The Sonata in G Major, Opus 79, is in a smaller format and Beethoven himself thought it could be called a sonatina – Sonate facile au sonatina – but it is still included among the sonatas. The Waldstein Sonata has enormous power, presented already in the initial bars of the first movement. It is in the key of C major, which Beethoven as well as the composers of the French Revolution frequently link to hope, victory, and joy.