♫ Welcome to Part 5 of Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas! Amazing to have gotten so far – we’ve now reached a point where it’s more a question of which sonatas we haven’t covered than which we have. Which brings me, neatly, to the topic of today’s lecture, the Sonata quasi una fantasia in E flat Major, Op. 27 no. 1. If you’ll remember, my “New Paths” lecture – the third lecture of the very first installment of this course – was nominally about the group of sonatas Op. 26, 27 and 28. I spoke at some length about the A flat major sonata, op. 26, sometimes called the “Funeral March” sonata. I spoke at greater length about the other Sonata quasi una fantasia, the c sharp minor op. 27 no. 2, which I am still loath to call the “Moonlight”. I talked a reasonable amount about the first movement of the D Major sonata, op. 28, the “Pastorale” -- I did ultimately decide to revisit that sonata later on, because I had only dealt with the first movement. But still, a number of major facets of the work got addressed in that New Paths lecture. Meanwhile, I barely said a word about – and failed to play even a note of – the subject of today’s lecture, the first sonata quasi una fantasia. And I have a bad conscience about it. I have a bad conscience about it because this is what ALWAYS happens. Op. 27 no. 1 is always, always, overlooked in favor of the Moonlight. I understand it, because the Moonlight is more surprising and riveting on an obvious level – with its eerie, suspended first movement, and its hell-for-leather finale. But op. 27 no. 1, its companion piece, is a fantastically inventive sonata – unlike anything else Beethoven wrote, and totally undeserving of its neglect. It is fair to say that rather than a step forward, it was an experiment – an idea Beethoven tried and then never really tried again. But that should not imply that it was in any way a failure, that it is unsuccessful as a piece: Beethoven simply ultimately chose another path, or paths. But Op. 27 no. 1 is a work of a very high order – surprising, delightful, and on occasion moving.
