♫ Given the incredible drama of the return, the sense of an impossible hurdle cleared, an unusual compositional problem addressed with an extraordinary solution, one might imagine that the rest of the movement would be, if not plain sailing, at least more or less by-the-book. One would be wrong. Having launched the recapitulation with that transition of highest intensity, Beethoven stays there. The second phrase of the piece, ♫ already dramatic and explosive in design the first time around, expands into something even bigger this time. In its first appearance, it lead to that grand motive, ♫ but kept us firmly in B flat major. Now, in the recap, which should hew closer to home, harmonicallh speaking, not further, it instead twists and turns and finally EXPLODES into far-off G flat major. ♫ I’m reminded at this moment of something I said about the first movement of the Appassionata – there, the passage leading to the recapitulation ♫ is unprecedented in the history of piano music in its scope and fury, and yet Beethoven tops it AGAIN, several times, in that very same piece. In the Hammerklavier, too, each unprecedented explosion is eventually revealed to be merely preamble to the next one. And so it is again here. That g flat major – ♫ an unexpected and rather wild destination – turns out to be merely a point of transition, a way station on the way to an even more dramatic juncture, and one more critical to the central drama of this sonata. ♫ B Minor! Again, an incursion of b natural. And let me remind you: this is the recapitulation, where these sorts of dramas do not typically occur, where the main task is to keep the music IN the tonic, from which it moved away in the exposition. So not just the presence of this b minor outburst, but its LOCATION makes a major statement about the themes and priorities of this work. Hearing a prominent B natural in the development ♫ may not have been the most expected event, but it would not have raised serious alarm bells; here in the recapitulation, it leaves no doubt as to the centrality of the half-step relationship, with its ominous overtones, to this sonata. So, having stumbled into this ominous place, how does Beethoven find his way back out of it? With a downward chain of thirds, of course. ♫ When the dissonant idée fixe causes trouble, the consonant one comes to the rescue! And now, with this largest scale B flat/B natural confrontation of the first movement resolved, the rest of the recapitulation really IS by the book. All of the four themes of the second group, each having been in the submediant of G Major the first time around, now come in the home key of B flat: relief! I won’t delve into the details, because really, in the whole second group B flat major return, there are no meaningful deviations from what happened in the exposition, from what you’d expect in a recapitulation. This is a rare, perhaps 90 second period of the Hammerklavier playing by the rules.