"Beethoven the Pianist" by Tilman Skowroneck

s intended biographer and a reliable witness, Beethoven considered his last sonatas the best that he had written for piano and added, "It is and remains an inadequate instrument." 1 The high demands of Beethoven's music for the instrument he masterly played are already evident in works like his three sonatas op. 2, or the Concerto in C major eventually published as Op. 15.The evolution of Beethoven's writing for piano is a rich and fascinating topic that extends far beyond his periods of active performance before audiences.It is evidently on account of his retreat from the concert platform in 1809 that Beethoven wrote out cadenzas to his earlier concertos, and incorporated the cadenzas to his Concerto in E-flat Major, op.73, directly into the score.The master improviser thereby enriched his pianistic style, and the sonatas of ensuing years, like Op. 101 and the "Hammerklavier" Op. 106, display numerous path-breaking features that have always challenged players.Beethoven himself described Op.106 as a "sonata that will give pianists something to do, and that it will be played 50 years hence" -a fairly accurate prediction, since, apart from Liszt, Clara Schumann, and Hans von Blow, few pianists tackled the challenges of this great sonata before the last decades of the nineteenth century

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