Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor

Beethoven composed his storm-tossed “Appassionata” Sonata (1804-05) as a musical act of defiance when his hearing was fast deteriorating. Two years before he began work on this most harrowing of his 32 piano sonatas, he had been sent under doctor’s orders to rest his ears in the peaceful surroundings of Heiligenstadt, then a small town with a hot spring on the outskirts of Vienna. Secluded away from familiar surroundings, Beethoven’s mood downturned as the full calamity of his condition began to dawn on him. In the so-called “Heiligenstadt Testament” (actually a letter to his brothers Carl and Johann), he revealed the full extent of his woes, wrote his will and even contemplated suicide before pulling back from the brink with fresh determination to defy his fate. The sea change in Beethoven’s creative outlook is first experienced in the epic “Eroica” Symphony, but it is the “Appassionata” Sonata (No. 23) (the title was added posthumously) that most fully reveals the composer’s turbulent feelings at this time. Even today, the searing emotional intensity of the opening “Allegro assai” requires extraordinary reserves of physical stamina and power—the pianos of Beethoven’s time literally buckled under the pressure. Then, as if to pour soothing balm on the emotional wounds inflicted by the opening movement, Beethoven continues with a radiant “Andante” theme and variations before a pair of anguished diminished chords unleashes the finale’s explosive rage.