Piano Sonata No. 23, Op. 57 “Appassionata”

The hands play together in octaves, quietly outlining F minor. The same phrase is then repeated a semitone higher. A short repeated-note figure follows, low on the keyboard, made of three short notes and a long one.

In 1838, eleven years after Beethoven’s death, the Hamburg publisher Cranz issued a four-hand arrangement under the title Sonata appassionata. The name stuck. Beethoven never wrote appassionato anywhere in the sonata.

A new melody rises through A♭ major, marked dolce (sweetly), in bars 36–⁠62. It has the broken-chord shape of the opening, now with an accompaniment. A♭ minor takes over within the same passage, and the hands drive towards a much fiercer ending.

The exposition ends in A♭ minor. The development opens with the bare opening phrase restated in E major, a distant key. Beethoven takes it through further keys, then develops fragments of the second theme.

The opening theme returns in F minor at bar 136, over a repeated C in the bass. This dominant pedal moves to D♭ and then back to C.

This recording by Schnabel dates from 1933. That year, with the Nazis in power, he left Germany with his family and settled in Italy. He had made Berlin his home for more than thirty years.

The dolce melody returns in F major. F minor then follows, repeating the change from major to minor that the tune underwent in the exposition.

The coda brings back the broken chord of the opening and takes the second theme into D♭ major. Long runs cross the keyboard. Beethoven then marks ritardando and Adagio, with a fermata before the final fast passage.

Più allegro: faster. The second subject returns in F minor above repeated chords in the left hand. The movement ends quietly in F minor.

Both hands begin low on the keyboard. D♭ major chords move in a measured two-beat tread, with small dotted figures at the ends of phrases. Each eight-bar half is repeated.

Beethoven dedicated the sonata to his friend Count Franz von Brunsvik. He never called it Appassionata. The name first appeared in 1838, on a four-hand arrangement published by Cranz of Hamburg.

In the first variation (bars 17–⁠35) the hands are separated. The upper chord sounds on the beat, and the bass enters after it and is tied across the next beat.

According to Paul Bigot, Beethoven arrived at the Bigots’ home in Vienna with the manuscript of the sonata soaked by rain. Marie Bigot played through it, erasures and corrections included. Beethoven promised her the manuscript and brought it back once the engraver had finished with it.

The right hand breaks the tune into semiquaver arpeggios. The left hand keeps the slower steps of the D♭ major theme underneath, and the pianist now plays four notes where there was once one.

Demisemiquavers run through the left hand below the melody, which moves in longer notes. Later the hands exchange roles, and the demisemiquavers rise high on the keyboard above the melody. The variation ends with a descending run back towards the opening chords.

In January and February 1927 Schnabel played all thirty-two Beethoven sonatas at Berlin’s Volksbühne, which no other pianist had done. He gave the cycle again at the Philharmonie from January to April 1933. The Nazis took power that year, and he left Germany.

The plain chords return in D♭ major, bars 86–⁠100. Beethoven leaves out the repeats, and the phrases move between registers of the keyboard. Low chords are followed by the same material an octave higher.

In place of a D♭ major chord, the movement ends on E–G–B♭–D♭, a diminished seventh, rolled and held under a fermata. Beethoven repeats it an octave higher. The finale begins on the same chord.

The diminished seventh left unresolved at the end of the Andante returns, struck thirteen times. The right hand then begins a semiquaver figure that descends the keyboard towards F minor.

The main theme starts pianissimo over a low F. It rises through the minor chord and runs down again, eight semiquavers to a bar. The left hand soon takes over the semiquavers, and the right hand plays a melody above them.

The second subject enters in C minor at bar 76, over continuing semiquavers. Rests break the right-hand phrases, and the left hand plays chords beneath them.

The development begins over a low B♭. The opening theme appears in B♭ minor and then modulates. A new chordal phrase enters at bar 142.

On a walk to Döbling, ending at eight in the evening, Beethoven hummed and howled the whole way. “A theme for the last Allegro of the sonata has come to me,” he told his pupil Ries. Indoors, hat still on, he raged at the piano for at least an hour.

After a dominant pedal on C in the bass, a low F brings back the opening tune, pianissimo and still running. The second subject also returns in F minor.

In January and February 1927, Schnabel played all thirty-two Beethoven sonatas at Berlin’s Volksbühne. He gave the complete cycle again at the Philharmonie in 1933, the year of this recording.

The music returns to the low B♭. Beethoven repeats the whole development and recapitulation, so the changing keys and the return to F minor are played a second time. The exposition has no repeat.

The first edition, dedicated to Count Franz von Brunsvik, came out in Vienna in 1807 from the Bureau des Arts et d’Industrie. It does not use the name “Appassionata”. The nickname first appeared in 1838, on a four-hand arrangement published by Cranz of Hamburg.

A short chordal theme enters in F minor over a leaping bass, with clipped replies. Beethoven repeats each of its two halves before the semiquavers return.

The opening theme returns at the faster tempo. Its semiquavers move downwards to the final chords in F minor, the key of the sonata’s first phrase.