Welcome to part two of the best free piano lessons you'll ever get. The second tranche of András Schiff's magisterial lecture series on Beethoven, given at London's Wigmore Hall to a capacity audience, is now live on the site - and you can download these exclusive, free files to your MP3 player or computer straight away.
In this lecture Schiff turns from the very early works he examined last time to a sequence still more innovative: the trio of sonatas in C minor, F major and D major, all from opus 10 - pieces in which the composer moves decisively out from the shadow of Haydn and his contemporaries to wrestle with something more angular and exploratory. The 27-year-old Beethoven is "fighting with the piano", Schiff suggests, even at this early stage of his career.
Schiff ends by looking at a departure even more radical (a piece all wannabe pianists have probably tried bashing through at one time or another), the "Pathétique" sonata, op. 13, which dates from the following year. Those famous, earth-shattering chords - C minor once again - should be handled, Schiff argues, not as theatrical scene-setting, but as an organic part of the whole.
So listen and enjoy ... we'll be releasing the next instalment next week.
Part 1. Piano Sonata in C minor, opus 10 no. 1 Download here
Part 2. Piano Sonata in F major, opus 10 no. 2 Download here
Part 3. Piano Sonata in D major, opus 10 no. 3 Download here
Part 4. Piano Sonata in C minor, "Pathétique", opus 13Download here
For more live recordings from the Wigmore Hall, see: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk • Podcast feed URL • What is RSS?
