Pianist Louis Kentner referred to the final movement of Beethoven’s Tempest sonata as “A wistful farewell to youth”. This is an appropriate observation, especially considering the ending, which vaporizes and slips away without warning.  The feeling of youth in this work is expressed through a perpetuum mobile, a driving and persistent grouping of 16th-notes that barely ceases for […]

Did you know that Brahms was such a perfectionist that he destroyed many of his early works because he later found them inferior? He was also a proponent of absolute music, that is, music that doesn’t have any extramusical associations– music for the sake of music. This is my favorite Brahms piece for solo piano. […]