Prom 64 – Sir Andras Schiff Performs Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Part of the BBC Proms.

Continuing his sequence of Proms solo recitals, legendary pianist Sir András Schiff returns with Beethoven’s final three sonatas. Written in 1820-22 alongside the Missa solemnis (see Prom 69) and the first sketches of the Ninth Symphony (see Prom 61), this trilogy of late works represents the composer’s last and most profound thoughts in a medium often seen as his most intimate and revealing: a ‘vivid, detailed self-portrait’, as Joseph Horowitz once described them. The lyrical, contained No. 30 contrasts with its more expansive successor – a hymn to hope in the face of despair – while No. 32 presents an Olympian conclusion to a monumental sequence of sonatas spanning a lifetime.