Piano Sonata No. 12 in A-Flat Major

With his Piano Sonata No. 12, composed in 1801, Beethoven begins to move into uncharted waters and expands the emotional range of his piano writing. The sequence of four movements also follows a more unconventional trajectory than any of his previous piano sonatas. Admittedly, Beethoven may have got the idea of opening the work with a theme and variations in moderately slow tempo from the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A major, K331. But Beethoven’s intensely expressive musical language is far removed from Mozart’s elegance and grace. The rest of the Sonata explores starkly contrasted moods. A bright and assertive second movement “Scherzo” is followed by the profoundly sad “Funeral march on the death of a hero”—an intriguing precursor of the slow movement to the “Eroica” Symphony in which the piano timbres in the middle section have a distinctly orchestral colouring, imitating the sound of muffled drum rolls and trumpet fanfares. The short finale is a dazzling fleet-footed movement with mesmerising syncopated rhythms, its bubbly exuberance sweeping away the sorrowful aura of the “Funeral march”.