Piano Sonata No. 14 in C‑Sharp Minor

One of Beethoven’s best-loved works, the "Moonlight" Sonata is the second of a pair of piano sonatas composed in 1801, around the time of his Symphony No. 2. Even during his lifetime, the first movement was the most famous music Beethoven composed, much to his increasing irritation. Both are named Sonata quasi una fantasia, incorporating elements of sonata and fantasy. The title of "Moonlight" was not Beethoven’s own. In 1832, five years after the composer’s death, the German critic Ludwig Rellstab described the first movement as evoking moonlight on Lake Lucerne, and the name stuck. The key of C sharp minor was highly unusual—Haydn used it only once, Mozart not at all and Beethoven returned to it only for the Op. 131 String Quartet—as was the intensely personal expressive world. The opening movement unfolds like a free improvisation concealing a tautly controlled formal logic, its tolling melodic line hinting at a crepuscular funeral march. The short central movement, a wistful intermezzo, was famously characterised by Liszt as a flower between two abysses. The finale was Beethoven’s most stormy music to date, remaining so until the finale of the "Appassionata" Sonata in 1805. A “Presto agitato” of running arpeggios and violent outbursts, stretching the limitations of contemporary instruments, dramatically reinterprets the gently tolling motif of the first movement, now presented as manically driven, percussive punctuations.