Sonata No. 28 op. 101

During the period of Austrian domination in Milan, a sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven was presented to the aristocratic audiences in a very unusual version. The difficult Sonata op. 101 appeared for the first time in Milan in the area of ​​the Brera district in 1820. It is significant that this sonata had been published by Giovanni Ricordi before the previous ones which were more comprehensible for listeners and known to the public, such as the so-called “Moonlight Sonata” or the “Pathétique”.

It was almost certainly an edition dictated by the policy of offering something that would be appreciated by the military leader of the city. But it is the printing of this sonata which attracts our attention in that it appeared in the unusual guise for harpsichord and violin. In this version, how the development unfolds is apparently very simple.

Here the violin supports one of the internal parts of the piano, allowing it to engage in a “lighter” four-part version of the entire piece. On other occasions, the violin doubles the melody of the piano. In the original version – perhaps for reasons of difficulty in performance – the famous Vivace alla Marcia is omitted, reconstructed by the editor in this first modern edition to allow the work to be performed in its entirety.

The inclusion of this missing movement was achieved by closely following the style of the version of the time, trying to be as faithful as possible to the overall picture of the development of the work as a whole. In the final movement, especially in the fugato, there is a more assiduous use of the violin as an instrument which completes the thematic phrases of the keyboard, a process which approaches a style closer to the form of the sonata for two.