Appassionato

Featuring

Donka Angatscheva
Ludwig van Beethoven

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Historical Context

Beethoven's piano music appealed to an enlightened, educated middle class of merchants, public servants, and professional musicians, who contributed to the development of bourgeois musical life and the rise of the piano.

Performer Biography

Donka Angatschewa, the pianist on this album, made her solo debut at age ten with the Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra and has won numerous international piano competitions.

Composition History

Beethoven faced considerable difficulty finding a publisher for his 11 Bagatelles op. 119, with one publisher, Carl Friedrich Peters, retracting his offer after hearing them, believing few would accept them as Beethoven's work.

Compositional Technique

Beethoven transformed the piano sonata from a mere exercise into a genuinely intellectual musical form, making it technically very demanding and requiring keen powers of perception.

Critical Reception

The conventional distinction between major and minor works was rendered obsolete by Beethoven, as his 'smaller' pieces, like the 11 Bagatelles, challenged contemporary critics and the perception of him as a 'composer-hero'.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Beethoven's piano music became the epitome of non-representative, autonomous instrumental music, embodying fundamental aesthetic and social ideas that shaped Western European art music since 1800.