Where

San Anton Palace, G.Portelli, Attard, Malta View map

The Three Palaces Festival Early Opera & Music Festival is a festival that takes place during the first week of November. Organised by Festivals Malta, the festival focuses on the premise that “our ordinary is actually extraordinary”, which is coming from the fact that in Malta we are surrounded by magnificent buildings that we pass by every day and barely notice their beauty.

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Ticket sales finished!

Ticket sales for Ludwig van Beethoven. The Complete Piano Sonata Cycle. unfortunately have now finished! The last day of this event was on Sunday 05-Nov-2023. Ticket sales ended at Sunday 05-Nov-2023 20:00.

Description

Michael Laus (soloist & presenter)

Caroline Calleja - Pianist

Maria Elena Farrugia - Pianist

Marco Rivoltini - Pianist

Francis Camilleri - Pianist

Alexander Panfilov - Pianist

For details regarding the sonatas presented in each concert please visit the following links:

https://www.festivals.mt/what-s-on/beethoven-marathon-1 
https://www.festivals.mt/what-s-on/beethoven-marathon-2 
https://www.festivals.mt/what-s-on/beethoven-marathon-3
https://www.festivals.mt/what-s-on/beethoven-marathon-4 
https://www.festivals.mt/what-s-on/beethoven-marathon-5 
https://www.festivals.mt/what-s-on/beethoven-marathon-6 


Considered by many pianists and critics as the New Testament of piano literature, the Old Testament being J.S.Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Beethoven’s thirty-two sonatas span most of his creative period, starting from the three sonatas Op. 2 composed in 1795 and dedicated to his teacher Joseph Haydn and going right up to his last monumental C minor Sonata Op. 111, composed in 1822 during his so-called third compositional period. Since Beethoven composed piano sonatas uninterruptedly throughout this period, by listening to the sonatas in chronological order one can have an almost complete overview of his development as a composer. The first group of thirteen works display various facets of the classical style, with the piano writing influenced by Haydn, Mozart, and Clementi. This group concludes with Op.22 (1800), with which Beethoven says adieu to the classical style.

The middle period sonatas, ranging from Op. 26 (1801) to Op. 90 (1814), display the composer continuously experimenting with form, harmony, and piano writing, including innovative uses of the sustain pedal. In the last five sonatas, from Op. 101 (1816) to Op. 111 (1822), there is a much greater use of counterpoint – in fact two of the sonatas, Op. 106 and Op. 110, end with fugues – and explore the newly-expanded register of the piano to the full. Each one of these last works has its own particular form, which develops naturally more from the musical content than from any pre-established forms.  

The first pianist to perform and record the complete cycle of sonatas was Artur Schnabel in 1935. He was followed by several pianists whose recorded cycles became legendary, most notably Wilhelm Kempff, Wilhelm Backhaus, Yves Nat, Claudio Arrau and, more recently, Daniel Barenboim and András Schiff.


Disclaimer: Price includes stand-up reception.