"I would never have believed that I could be so lazy as I am here. If it is followed by an outburst of industry, something worthwhile may be accomplished." So wrote Beethoven from the Austrian spa ...

From the early Op. 2 set of sonatas to the famous 'Moonlight', find out why Beethoven's piano sonatas broke the mould - and hear from pianists themselves about how they approach performing them.

Of all the musical genres (that word again), the Piano Sonata is the only one that Beethoven worked on more or less consistently throughout his life. No large gaps as with the Symphonies or String ...

Which Claudio Arrau do you like best: The young virtuoso? The elder statesman of the recording studio, whose grave, sometimes ponderous persona obliterated his younger self? Or the mature master who ...

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Slowly spiralling chords in the right hand. Deep, sinking bass in the left. The opening to Beethoven’s ...

Writing a warm if inevitably parti pris appreciation of Stephen Kovacevich’s nine-CD and 12-year project, producer John Fraser speaks of ‘an artist of almost self-punishing honesty and integrity’.

Compared to the vivacious lightness of touch in the first, G major Sonata of Op. 31, the second is, as its nickname suggests, a stormy work. The name, as so often in Beethoven's piano sonatas, was not ...