The Koroliov Series, Vol. 16: Beethoven – Sonatas, Opp. 109, 110 & 111
8/21/2020, 8 Tracks, 1:06:07
Featuring
Evgeni Koroliov
Ludwig van Beethoven
Did you know?
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Composition History
These sonatas were ultimately published individually due to Beethoven's serious illness and his increasingly complex work on the Missa solemnis, which overshadowed their composition.
Critical Reception
Contemporaries reacted to Beethoven's late sonatas with both admiration and surprise, as he used traditional forms and musical elements in new, inverted ways.
Performer Biography
Composer György Ligeti famously stated that if he could only take one musical work to a desert island, he would choose Evgeni Koroliov's recording of Bach's The Art of Fugue.
Performer Biography
Evgeni Koroliov, the pianist on this album, was born in Moscow in 1949 and studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory before becoming a professor in Hamburg.
Cultural Impact
The question of why Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 111 has only two movements is explored in Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus, featuring the music scholar Wendell Kretzschmar.
Composition History
Beethoven initially planned to publish these three sonatas (Op. 109, 110, 111) as a single work under one opus number, as he had done with earlier groups of sonatas.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Beethoven's late works, including these sonatas, show a renewed and intensified engagement with the music of Baroque masters like Bach and Handel.
