Beethoven’s three piano sonatas op. 2 were the first works in this genre to which he gave an opus number, thus signalling to the musical world the special importance that he assigned to them. He wrote them during his first years in Vienna and, along with his op. 1 piano trios, they helped to establish his reputation as one of the most significant composers of his time. These three sonatas - all of them small masterpieces - are arranged in ascending order of difficulty and virtuosity. The four-movement Sonata in f minor is often called the “Little Appassionata” because it shares with the famous Sonata op. 57 not just its key, but also its impassioned mood - especially in the last movement.
Murray Perahia’s fingerings have been tried and tested over several decades of performing these works, and offer a new approach to these milestones of the piano repertoire.
G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French