Preface
In early 2025, a young colleague of mine, Paul Wee, who implausibly combines a brilliant career as a concert pianist with practice at the commercial bar, asked me to write what I still think of as “sleeve notes” (as we used to call the accompanying explanation on the back of LPs) for his new CD recording of the final five piano sonatas of Beethoven. I am grateful to him, for the project got me going again after a period of cultural silence brought about by a lengthy professional commitment. Several years before, I had written an essay on the Hammerklavier sonata Op 106 (see Musical Mountain Obscured by Cloud elsewhere on this website) which could be re-purposed, but approaching the other four from scratch posed in acute form the perennial challenge of rendering abstract music – and what music – in words. The last three sonatas made an obvious subject for an essay, and once more my friends at The New Criterion were the ideal hosts – flexible as to subject-matter and length and simultaneously receptive and rigorous in the editorial process.