Luogo e data di registrazione		-
	Original Editions		Telefunken | 6.35472 FK | 3 LPs | LC 0366 | durata: 46' 29" · 43' 17" · 46' 12" | (p) 1981 | ANA | stereo
	Edizione CD		Teldec | 9031-71719-2 | 8 CDs | LC 3706 | (c) 1990 | DDD/DMM | stereo | Klaviersonaten Nr. 1-32 Teldec | 8.43415 ZK | 1 CD | LC 3706 | (c) 1986 | DDD/DMM | stereo | Klaviersonaten Nr. 3 Teldec | 8.43476 ZK | 1 CD | LC 3706 | (c) 1987 | DDD/DMM | stereo | Klaviersonate Nr. 7 Teldec | 8.42913 ZK | 1 CD | LC 3706 | (c) 1983 | DDD/DMM | stereo | Klaviersonate Nr. 14, 23 Teldec | 8.43478 ZK | 1 CD | LC 3706 | (c) 1987 | DDD/DMM | stereo | Klaviersonate Nr. 25 Teldec | 8.43334 ZK | 1 CD | LC 3706 | (c) 1986 | DDD/DMM | stereo | Klaviersonate Nr. 17, 18
	Executive Producer		-
	Recording Engineer		-
	Cover		Ludwig van Beethoven, Gemälde von J. W. Mähler, 1815
	Note		-

BUCHBINDER BEETHOVEN 32 KLAVIERSONATEN 3 LPs - 6.35472 FK - (p) 1980 2 LPs - 6.35490 FK - (p) 1981 3 LPs - 6,35581 FK - (p) 1982 3 LPs - 6.35596 FK - (p) 1982	RE-RELEASE ON COMPACT DISC (DMM) 1 CD - 8.43415 ZK - (c) 1986 (Nr.3) 1 CD - 8.43476 ZK - (c) 1987 (Nr.7) 1 CD - 8.42913 ZK - (c) 1983 (Nr.14,23) 1 CD - 8.43478 ZK - (c) 1987 (Nr.25) 1 CD - 8.43334 ZK - (c) 1986 (Nr.17,18)	Piano Sonatas Nr. 3 C-dur, Op. 2 Nr. 3 Even the first compositions produced by Beethoven in Vienna were fully mature works: the three Piano Trios of op. 1, written in 1793/4 and dedicated to his most eminent patron, Prince Carl Lichnowsky, of whom he was to say in 1805: ”He is truly one of my most faithful friends and the promoter of my art - something fairly unusual in that class,” and the three Piano Sonatas of op. 2, dedicated to Joseph Haydn. When Beethoven moved to Vienna from Bonn in the autumn of 1792 - temporarily, as he thought - he became Haydn’s pupil for about a year. Not merely does the dedication express the customary gratitude shown to a teacher, but the three sonatas represent what the young composer, whom Haydn had as early as 1795 described, in a diary entry, as a genius, had learnt from his teacher’s style rather than from his lessons. In this context it is worth recalling the prophetic words with which Count Waldstein concluded his entry in Beethoven’s album on the eve of his departure from Bonn: “By unremitting diligence you will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn." In 1795 Beethoven wrote the three sonatas of op. 2, incorporating in them some previously composed material, and they were published a year later. The richness and inventiveness which they display is divorced from any kind of formalism. No. 3 in C, one of Beethoven's most frequently played sonatas, is conceived on the largest scale and contains elements of orchestral sonorities, as opposed to the "chamber music” scale of  No. 1 and the pianistic virtuosity cf No. 2. The first movement of this sonata is sometimes described as a piano concerto in disguise, because of the interesting changes in the tone colour and figuration, and particularly on account of the strange free cadenza which is interpolated between the end of the recapitulation and the coda. However, Beethoven’s music is particularly characterised by the fact that traditional types of style, such as ”chamber music,” “pianistic” etc. are constantly reshaped, discarded, indeed stripped of their traditional, typical effect. As far as the A flat major cadenza in the first movement is concerned, it is reminiscent neither in its placing nor in its internal form of a true concerto cadenza; this passage is free improvisatory soliloquising, and a last product of the surprise element in this movement, which is derived from constantly changing confrontations with and digressions from the terse opening motif, which, taken by itself, would have led one to expect the movement to take an entirely different course. The second movement, an Adagio in the third-related key of E which moves through manifold ranges of expression as though in a dream, appears to be just one vast elaboration of the improvisation at the end of the first movement. In 1842 Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny stated in his notes on the interpretation of the sonatas that this adagio already displayed a romantic tendency that later enabled Beethoven to create a type of composition which raised instrumental music to the level of painting and poetry. Particularly strange is the sudden eruption in the second half, fortissimo, in the contrasting key of C, an isolated variant of the two bars of the first subject - but it turns out to be merely an obvious harking back to the beginning of the first movement; material that has already been encountered is treated as though it were entirely new. Details such as these indicate what Beethoven put into his compositions. In the Scherzo, strangely enough, the violence does not flare up until the Trio is reached and the triplets create the illusion of increased speed. The motivic element of the movement centres, in essence, on the contrast between the major and minor seconds in the two versions of the first motif. At the very end of the coda, which flits from mighty octave leaps to a pianissimo, the interval is reversed and the second rises from B to C. A reworking of the material down to its smallest components, typical of Beethoven’s writing from then on, is one of his finest legacies from Haydn. Piano Sonata Nr. 7 D-dur, Op. 10 Nr. 3 The three sonates of op. 10 were written shortly afterwards, in the periodo 1796/98, as was the Sonata op. 7; they were published in 1798 along with the Trio for Strings op. 9 Op. 10 No. 1 in C minor is the most popular, but the most important, without a doubt, is No. 3. Its core is the slow movement, Largo e mesto, a mighty lamentation, a tragic song of mourning in pallid hues, expressing in its nuances of light and shade, as Beethovens friend and amanuensis Anton Schindler claims he was told, the state of mind of someone who has become a prey to melancholy. This largo introduces new sounds into piano music which exceed the melancholy of some of Mozart’s pieces or the expressive eccentricity of C. P. E. Bach; some passages almost seem to anticipate Liszt. Three decades later Czerny wrote: ”This Adagio is one of Beethoven’s most magnificent, but also most melancholy.” However, the irritation caused to Beethoven’s contemporaries by this piece, which they felt to be obscurely dark, was expressed in a review in 1798: ”The superfluity of ideas, of which an aspiring genius generally manages to rid himself, still frequently drives him veritably to pile his wild thoughts on top of one another and to arrange them in a most peculiar manner. Thus he often descends to a sombre art or an artificial sombreness which is a drawback rather than an advantage for the overall effect...” Evidently it was not only the late works of Beethoven that appeared incomprehensible. The bright first movement is in marked contrast; incessant rapid motion, the progress of which is almost entirely derived from a single short motif. Similarly, the Finale, with its wittily cheerful interplay of question and answer. The only movement which seems to have any emotional connection with the Largo, by providing some relaxation, is the Minuet, which is in major throughout; as in op. 2, No. 3, the allegro tempo does not assert itself until the middle section, with its demanding triplets and pointed upbeats, derived from the minuet subject, is reached. Piano Sonata Nr. 14 cis-moll, Op. 27 Nr. 2 "Mondscheinsonate" Beethoven called both works of op. 27, written in 1800/01, ”Sonata quasi una Fantasia,” in order to draw attention to their deviation from the usual form; the movements merge into one another as in a Fantasia, and in op. 27. No. 1 they are even formally interwoven. The first movement is ternary, with two different tempi; towards the end of the last movement the Adagio is echoed - an anticipation of techniques employed by Beethoven in his late works. The Sonata in C sharp minor, although, and perhaps because, it is certainly not one of his greatest works, has attained a popularity that is not easily explained. Thus, a Russian Beethoven enthusiast complained that in Paris at the end of the 1820s only three of Beethoven’s sonatas were ever played: the one in A flat op. 26; op. 27, No. 2 and the ”Appassionata.” Beethoven himself is supposed to have told Czerny that people were always talking about the sonata in C sharp minor, for all that he had certainly written better pieces. No doubt the work owes much of its popularity to the first movement. The Berlin critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab, for instance, imagined himself in a boat on the moonlit Lake of Lucerne (hence the name "Moonlight Sonata”); others heard in it a lament for the dead, Czerny wrote: ”It is a nocturnal scene with the voices of a ghost mourning from afar." There has been speculation, too, about a link beetwen the work and the dedicatee, the young Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, to whom Beethoven was close; she may possibly have been the addressee of the much debated letter to the “Immortal Beloved.” From that point of view the sonata is the pessimistic expression of hopeless love, which surely is too romantic, too subjective, too facile an interpretation. Examined from the viewpoint of a fantasia, the Adagio would appear to be a large, dreamily improvisatory introduction followed first by a contrasting short central movement in the major in the manner of an intermezzo, and then by the principal movement proper, a Presto in the same key as the Adagio, C sharp minor, a taxing piece that races along, a true sonata movement in form. Piano Sonata Nr. 25 (Sonatine), Op. 79 The Sonatina op. 79, written in 1809, is, like a piece of light relief, over-shadowed by greater works: the Choral Fantasia op. 80; the Emperor Concerto; the String Quartet op. 74; the incidental music for ”Egmont” and the Sonata op. 81a "Les Adieux." In a letter to his publishers Beethoven expressly described the work which, incidentally, he wanted published with its predecessor, op. 78, as a ”Sonatine facile." Until the relevant sketches were discovered it was thought that this was an early work which, like the piano sonatas of op. 49 or the Capriccio “The rage over the lost penny," he had simply published much later. Many details, however, militate against this view, for example the not immediately apparent structural and thematic linking of the three movements by the interval of a third, which is common to all of them. As Joachim Kaiser puts it, ”anyone who analyses the sonata carefully should be able to prove without difficulty something that no sensible person would dispute, namely that this work, which is never tediously regular or pedantically dry, obviously comes from the hand of the mature Beethoven.” Incidentally, Czerny omits it from the catalogue of sonatas, as he does both works of op. 49; he therefore, unlike later catalogues, acknowledges not 32 but only 29 "great sonatas, which by themselves would suffice to render his name immortal." Piano Sonata Nr. 23 f-moll. Op. 57 "Appassionata" The ”Appassionata,” the name of which, like so many others, is not Beethoven’s own but was added by a publisher in 1834, was composed in 1804/05, in a period which saw a number of other great works, among them the Waldstein Sonata, the Triple Concerto and notably ”Fidelio.” Sketches for the sonata, which is dedicated to Beethoven's friend and patron Count Franz von Brunsvik, are contained in a notebook which is mostly taken up with work on the opera. Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries tclls the following story of the composition of the sonata: "Throughout the whole of a long walk, during which we lost our way to such an extent that we did not return to Döbling until eight o’clock, he had been muttering and sometimes howling to himself, always up and down, without singing any specific notes. When I asked him what he was doing he replied: ’I have just thought of a theme for the final Allegro of the sonata.’ When we got indoors, he hurried to the piano without even removing his hat. I sat down in a corner, and soon he had forgotten my presence. Then he thumped away for at least an hour at the new, beautiful finale of the sonata.” This finale, linked directly to the tranquil variations of the third movement by strident dissonances, rages like a ceaseless tempest; virtuosity, never an end in itself, is totally subservient to expressiveness. The movement hardly ever strays from the minor, there is no gleam of light, no solace. Indeed in the presto coda, which at first introduces a new, pounding theme, the furious arpeggios and broken chords which dominate the whole movement develop into thunderous sounds that erupt into an apocalyptic uproar. In abstract terms the first movement, too, is largely constructed of simple broken triads; the exposition is not repeated in the usual manner, but is like a fantasia in the grand concertante style with continuous variation on two themes, the second one being merely a kind of free inversion of the first. As in the Finale, there is a stretta coda, but after hugely massed chords it subsides quite unexpectedly into a wan pianissimo. The whole movement is permeated by a knocking motif which in the recapitulation disturbingly underlies the first subject for some time and seems to foreshadow the opening of the fifth symphony. Piano Sonatas Nr. 17 d-moll, Op. 31 Nr. 2 "Der Sturm - Nr. 18 Es-dur, Op. 31 Nr. 3 Beethoven wrote the three sonatas of op. 31 in 1801/02, during a period of upheaval marked by his personal crisis, the first signs of his deafness (”Heiligenstadt Testament," 1802); but it was also a period of artistic upheaval. “I am not very pleased with the works that I have written to date. As from today, I shall embark on a new course” is what, according to Czerny, Beethoven said to the violinist Wenzel Krumpholz (presumably in 1802). This new course manifested itself most clearly in the ”Eroica,” written in 1803, and representing an entirely new symphonic style; but it is also evident in his piano works, such as the Variations op. 35 (1802) and not least in the Sonatas of op. 31, particularly in Nos. 2 and 3, which in many respects appear to continue the experiments in form contained in the two sonatas ”Quasi una Fantasia” of op. 27. Czerny: "Shortly after this event” (the remark quoted above) "three sonatas appeared, in which can be observed the partial realisation of his resolve.” Exceptionally, the Sonata in D minor has only three movements. The middle movement is a broadly conceived Adagio with vast sonorities, fanning out in an almost orchestral fashion, in which various registers answer one another and a sublime, slow melody is embellished by remarkably detailed figurations. The last movement is an Allegretto, clearly developed from the broken chord; its form is a mixture of rondo and sonata. According to an anecdote related by Czerny, Beethoven got his inspiration for the kinetic energy which infuses the movement from watching a horseman who rode past his window one day. But when Schindler questioned the composer about the significance of this sonata and of the ”Appassionata," he is said to have replied, quite casually: “Read Shakespeare’s ’Tempest’!" The Sonata in E flat has four movements ; the second, however, is a Scherzo in duple time, of a humorous character which in the case of Beethoven means grotesque, full of surprises and constant dynamic and rhythmic changes. The third movement is a brief Minuet, which appears from its grazioso strain to be intended as a substitute for the missing slow movement. But even more than in these deviations in form from the accepted rule, the “new course” can be discerned in what may be described as the developmental character of the form: the manner in which the thematic material not only continues to change, but is presented not as a structure which is complete in itself but as one still in the process of evolution. Thus the first subject of the opening movement of op. 31, No. 2 is only recognised as such when at long last the key and the basic tempo are established in bar 21: after a rudimentary introduction one does not, as one might expect, encounter the subject but rather its continuation and elaboration. The “subject” - it barely accords with the accepted definition of the term - has been more or less concealed in the seemingly improvisatory interplay of the largo broken chords and violinistic scales of the opening. In the recapitulation the “subject” is even more completely obscured by recitativic interpolations, rather as though it were a development section; there is no corresponding D minor passage (as in bar 21), but in its place there appears a passage in the contrasting key of F sharp minor, the opening key of the development, which gives an impression of being entirely new. No less improvisatory is the beginning of the Sonata in E flat, opening with a bird call in the subdominant and thus strictly dissonant, as though it were an answering phrase replying to a question that has not actually been posed. The same device is again employed in the last movement of the same sonata: the first figure is not like a beginning, but is a turn of phrase which is a typical ending. Jean Meuchtelbach