Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1, 2 & 3

Every development of a musical genre has its own point of departure. In Ludwig van Beethoven's piano sonatas, this consists of the three Sonatas Op. 2, with which he immediately created an exclamation mark. As Beethoven's first works in this genre, they must naturally undergo an artistic comparison with the contributions made by his near contemporaries Mozart and Haydn. And they must not shrink from this. After all, in these works already, Beethoven took the Classical form of the piano sonata to unprecedented heights. The listener senses his endeavours to set new standards for the genre. Consequently, the Sonatas Op. 2 are the interface between tradition and the new "awakening", the hinge, as it were, between old and new. Because apart from being rooted in the tradition of Haydn and Mozart, as far as composition is concerned, Beethoven forces his way with his three sonatas into the 19th century, in a manner that is impossible to ignore.
The Sonatas Op. 2 are dedicated to Joseph Haydn, with whom Beethoven studied between the end of 1792 and the beginning of 1794. They were written between 1790 (sketches for No. 1) and 1795, and received their first performance in the presence of the dedicatee in September 1795 at the palace of Prince Carl von Lichnowsky.