Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major

The Piano Sonata in E major, Op. 109, is the first of a final trilogy of Beethoven’s piano sonatas (opp. 109-111) that—as with Schubert’s last three sonatas—are often grouped together and heard as a cycle on record and in the concert hall, although they were published separately. It was composed in 1820, the year Beethoven turned 50. There are three movements, heavily weighted toward a magisterial set of variations at the end. The first movement sounds like an inspired improvisation, with a fast and very short first idea immediately contrasted with a slow and expressively decorated second theme. The second movement, equally brief, is a stormy march-cum-scherzo in E minor, “Prestissimo” and assertively polyphonic. As in Beethoven’s last piano sonata, Op. 111, he crowns the work with a set of variations on a beautifully simple theme, rather like a sarabande, although with a vocal, hymn-like quality. There are six variations, progressing from the song-like first and the Bach-like figurations of variations 3 and 5, until the ever-intensifying final variation culminates in an astonishing series of sustained trills. After such visionary music, Beethoven ends with a simple return of the theme, as in Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which now seems completely modified by all that has gone before.