Programme Index

Discover 11,128,835 listings and 281,501 playable programmes from the BBC

BEETHOVEN PIANOFORTE SONATAS
Played by EDWARD ISAACS
Sonata in D Minor, Op. 31, No. 2 (concluded)
Allegretto
First Movement (Allegro con brio), Sonata in C, Op. 53 (Tho ' Waldstein ' Sonata)
THE Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel Waldstein was one of Beethoven's earliest friends, knowing him from his youthful years in Bonn, before ho moved to Vienna. The Count was himself no mean musician, pianist, and composer, and Beethoven made a set of Variations for four hands at the pianoforte, on an air composed by the Count.
The great Sonata dedicated to him was composed, so far as we know, in 1804, when Beethoven was living in his country quarters at Dobling. After one of his outbreaks of violent temper, ho had left von Breuning in dudgeon, and, stopping first at Baden, had gone back to his old resort at Dobling. The Sonata originally included a much longer slow movement than this present one, but Beethoven afterwards took that out and had it published as a separate piece ; it is known now as the ' Andante Favori.' As it stands, the Sonata begins with a big Allegro movement. Then an introductory Adagio leads to a Rondo at moderate speed, and a Prestissimo closes it with a sense of real excitement and hurry.

IN the matter of appreciation it is with poetry. as with the other arts: one's enjoyment is multiplied considerably by an intelligent understanding of the ' craft' of the art. Thus, as Mr. Ridley will show to-night, it is a real enhancement of the reader's pleasure to know why, in such and such a case, such and such a form was used in preference to any other. For the form that a poem takes in the poet's mind is far from accidental ; sonnet or ode or lyric or epic—all are dictated by the peculiar demands of the subject that has inspired the poet. He mav not even consciously have chosen his medium; it will probably have dictated itself; but there will bo no mistaking its rightness—or wrongness—when the poem is made.

2LO London

Appears in

About this data

This data is drawn from the Radio Times magazine between 1923 and 2009. It shows what was scheduled to be broadcast, meaning it was subject to change and may not be accurate. More