Beginning Beethoven
The first page of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1, from my beat-up Schenker edition For a long time, I have aspired to learn and eventually perform all of Ludwig van Beethoven's piano sonatas. I grew up hearing them and they have remained, after the keyboard works of Bach, probably the most influential works in my musical development. I think now is the time to start working on this massive undertaking in earnest. In this post, I will explain how I plan to approach this project. Background I worked on Beethoven's first sonata (Op. 2, No. 1) with my teacher David Zapka six or seven years ago, but I never manage to master its difficulties, owing partly to a lack of dedication and poor practice habits. A couple years later, I worked with him on the second sonata (Op. 2, No. 2), with essentially the same result - I got it "sort of" in my fingers, but never mastered it. I also worked with him on No. 20 in G Major, the easiest sonata. The story of how that came ab...