Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Such a great piece!

So, this week and last week I learned the Beethoveen sonata in G major op. 49, no. 2. For me it's just a 40 piece challenge piece but while playing it I realized that this is an ideal didactic piece. It's a perfect microcosm of the classical period. It has everything, both technically and musically - scales, arpeggios, thirds, ornaments, repeated notes, dotted rhythms, syncopations, alternating between duple and triple time, many different types of articulation. But musically it also has many different characters, from slow cantabile to lively running passages and even a short dramatic section. I learned both movements but even just the first movement has everything. IMO, for someone of an intermediate level this is one of those pieces that will give you the biggest bang for your buck and it's also easier to make it sound great than something like Mozart K. 545.

If you are around that level go learn this piece!

looks like Grade 6

I went through 1st movement early this year as a progress piece, so it was a challenge for me. It started to fade out now sadly and I really regret not recording it while it was fresh (even with some mistakes).

It was my first sonata movement (after dozen of sonatinas) and first Beethoven piece. I remember enjoying it a lot from the first chord and especially once I got the right feeling of switching between rhythms. Remember spending a lot of time on one particular trill near the end as the ability to execute it defined the tempo for the whole piece for me.
Can't recommend it enough once you are done with Op. 36 of Clementi's Sonatinas.

If you mean the trill in bar 109 then you don't need to play many notes. Even just a 4-note trill is fine. It's more important to be able to play it reliably and consistently.

I don't think the ability to execute one trill should ever define the tempo for a whole piece, especially at the intermediate level.

We’re lucky to have them at all. Didn’t his brother pilfer the scores and publish them without consent? LvB didn’t want them published.

Sam

Yes, I know. Good thing he didn't destroy them. I sometimes wonder how much great music has been lost forever. Apparently, Brahms was meticulous about destroying traces of his early work.