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Roberto Prosseda

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN - Sonatas Opus 2

Release Date: April 11, 2025

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Mendelssohn's Piano concerto n. 1 op. 25 with Enescu Philharmonic
1 Sonata Op. 2, No. 1 in F Minor / I. Allegro 5:14  
2 II. Adagio (fa maggiore) 4:51  
3 III. Menuetto. Allegretto 2:40  
4 IV. Prestissimo 4:23  
5 Sonata Op. 2, No. 2 in A Major / I. Allegro vivace 6:54  
6 II. Largo appassionato 6:03  
7 III. Scherzo. Allegretto 3:36  
8 IV. Rondo 7:14  
9 Sonata Op. 2, No. 3 in C Major / I. Allegro con brio 10:22  
10 II. Adagio 7:24  
11 III. Scherzo 3:37  
12 IV. Allegro assai 5:29  
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Like most pianists, I have been playing Beethoven’s Sonatas since my earliest years of study, and have regularly performed many of them in concert over the past 30 years. However, I had not so far dared to approach the recording of Beethoven’s Sonatas, not least because of the huge number of recordings already made by many of the greatest performers.

Now, at the age of 50, and after having tackled and systematically recorded all of Mozart’s piano music, I have decided to approach the recording of Beethoven’s first sonatas. I consider them, from a certain point of view,
to be a natural continuation of the in-depth work I have already done with Mozart’s music.

Can something new, interesting and ‘true’ still be said about the interpretation of Beethoven’s sonatas? I believe so, provided we break out of the conventions created by the tradition of interpretation and discography, where a modern piano is used in 98% of cases. Therefore, I thought that the choice to record Beethoven on a historical instrument could also be a way of embarking on
a more individual interpretative investigation, free from the models we risk becoming accustomed to from listening to famous recordings on modern pianos. Having become more and more familiar with historical instruments in recent years, I have gradually come to realise that Beethoven’s music, and especially that of the early period, can sound much more meaningful and ‘sincere’ on the fortepiano than on the modern piano. It is not, of course, a question of having to recreate the sound Beethoven had in mind at any cost. After all, today, more than 200 years after the composition of Beethoven’s

Sonatas, our perception of sound has also changed: the same sound of a fortepiano certainly had a different effect on a Viennese listener in 1795, compared to a listener today.

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