“The moment he is seated at the piano, he is evidently unconscious that there is anything in existence but himself and his instrument; and, considering how very deaf he is, it seems impossible that he should hear all he plays. Accordingly, when playing very piano, he often does not bring out a single note . . . The muscles of his face swell, and its veins start out; the wild eye rolls doubly wild; the mouth quivers, and Beethoven looks like a wizard, overpowered by the demons whom he himself has called up” – John Russell (1820s)

Once the the greatness of Beethoven’s output is set aside and we delve deep into the emotional essence of this music, we realise there is an abundance of expressive features that lie hidden between the lines. Beethoven wrote very precise directions, extremely advanced for his times, yet it is clear that his indications alone are certainly not enough to bring his music to life. There are so many shades of piano, as much as there are variations in the ways an artist creates the impression of crescendos, sotto voce and infinite ways in which we conceive the effect of mit inningsten Empfindung. The Beethoven's scores are rife with recurring themes, intricate motivic relations, that wait to be discovered, fragments of melodies that repeat across shorter or longer spans of music. An artist must use these recognisable elements, infuse them with a certain individual expression, to construct the narrative, a psychological journey about becoming and the multitude of tormented and life affirming emotional states that are there as part of the transformative process.

We speak of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas by comparing them with his orchestral or string quartet music. It is for this very reason that I have included Tausig's rarely played arrangement of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 13 here, in my piano solo album.
I like to imagine that Beethoven composed parts of the string quartet No. 13 seated at his piano, the topography of the piano being at the very inception of these phrases intended for the strings. The middle section is reminiscent of the Arietta of his Piano Sonata in A flat major op. 110, bearing numerous similarities in the mood suggested by the key of A flat minor, similar idiosyncratic articulation instructions appear in the melody too. This short piano arrangement, Kavatine, is an epilogue to the serenity of op. 110 but is also the path leading to the unfathomable harmonies of op. 111.