Beethoven: Sonata No.2 in A major, Op.2, No.2 – Boris Giltburg | Beethoven 32 project

Beethoven 32 – Over the year 2020, I will be learning and filming all 32 Beethoven sonatas. Subscribe to this channel to follow the project, and visit for blog posts and listening guides to each sonata. Beethoven’s sonatas Op. 2 were his calling card in Vienna as a composer. At that point – 1795 – he was already famous as a keyboard virtuoso, but the transition to fame as a composer was not obvious, and he took great care with the first works he published, a set of three trios (Op. 1) and three sonatas (Op. 2). If the first sonata of the opus showed us a laconic, tense and passionate Beethoven, here in the A major sonata he is charming, good natured, outgoing, eloquent. The form, too, is gradually becoming larger, the textures more generous, the writing more pianistic. The first movement, energetic and at places blazingly virtuosic, contains an unexpected and inspired second subject in the minor key, lending a personal, urgent note to the music. (It also contains a