Composer: BEETHOVEN; SCHUBERT

Tracks/ Timings: BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 15 in D Major 'Pastoral', Op. 28 (24:19); Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor 'Appassionata', Op. 57 (24:35); SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat Major, D. 960 (41:22)

Information:
Andreas Haefliger continues his fascinating perspectives series paring works by Beethoven with other composers...here are the pianist's own words on this series....
Perspectives presents an ambitious expansion of what might be thought a more conventional Beethoven Piano Sonata “cycle.” In a series of twelve piano recitals that bring other solo piano works together with Beethoven’s thirty-two Sonatas, Perspectives features not only the Sonatas themselves but explores the affinities between Beethoven’s compositional _expression and the music of others who came before and after. The idea of the Perspectives approach came about as a natural extension of Andreas Haefliger’s artistic journey through the Sonatas as a performer and my own coinciding interest in Beethoven’s music as a point of arrival and departure. This journey has inspired both personal programmatic ideas about Beethoven’s works and an ever-renewed appreciation of their pure musical _expression. The piano was Beethoven’s instrument of choice when it came to establishing his unique personal language. Twenty of the Sonatas date from his “early period,” the first ten years of his life as a composer when he was seeking a mode of self-_expression and working to define his compositional voice. The later Sonatas, written in the last intensely creative years of his life, represent a marked departure from Beethoven’s previous style: these are works informed by his preoccupation with his own inner emotional conscience; they are also harbingers of the future.
In that the Beethoven Sonatas were not meant to be performed in chronological order or in any other abstract cycle, it seems proper to present them here over a span of six years—comparing, contrasting, informing, and framing them, flashing forward and back—with other works whose affinities with the Sonatas are made more clear by the sheer existence of Beethoven’s music. Thus the twelve recitals are arranged in sets of two, one pair each season, of which the first is devoted entirely to Beethoven, the second to a combining of Beethoven with the works of other composers. We will look at Beethoven’s music through the perspective of Mozart, Bartók, Brahms, Ives, Janácek, Schoenberg, and Ligeti in carefully wrought chapters. Each seasonal pair also centers on a programmatic theme which provides the attending threads, some thick some thin, that give coherence to the entire project. These six themes serve to bring into focus the commonality of artistic ideas, thoughts, events, and leaps of imagination, uniting the music we will hear: 2004–05: Forging a Personal Language of Intimacy and Fervor 2005–06: The spirit of Mozart... 2006–07: Fueling the Romantic Imagination 2007–08: New Sonorities: New Directions 2008–09: Rite of Passage 2009–10: Intimations of the Future Join the odyssey. One way or another we will be the better for it.