Happy 27th!

Daniel Barenboim performing the Beethoven piano sonata no. 27, opus 90.  This sonata begins the grouping known as "the late Beethoven piano sonatas."

Anthony Storr writes: "Beethoven's late compositions, including the famous late quartets, are so-called 'third period' compositions. Beethoven's creative output has been famously described as tripartite, with an early, middle, and late period. Actually, according to some psychologists, the work of all artists typically passes through three phases, provided they live long enough. Third period works have certain characteristics. First, they are less concerned with communication than what has gone before. Second, they are often unconventional in form, and appear to be striving to achieve a new kind of unity between elements which at first sight are extremely disparate, Third, they are characterized by an absence of rhetoric or any need to convince. Fourth, they seem to be exploring remote areas of experience which are intrapersonal or suprapersonal rather than interpersonal. That is, the artist is looking into the depths of his own psyche and is not very much concerned as to whether anyone else will follow him or understand him." 

http://dailstrug.blogspot.com/2009/11/loose-associations-gws-misdiagnosis.html





You might be interested in the following lecture on the Beethoven piano sonata opus 90, given by the pianist Andras Schiff.  Andras Schiff is a Jewish pianist, both of whose parents were Holocaust survivors.  "I am 1000 percent Jewish," he says.  I, on the other hand, am only 50% Jewish, but that's enough for me!