Podcast Program No. 49
Under the Influence (34.8MB)
Music for solo piano performed by Jonathan Biss.

•Berg: Sonata for piano, Op. 1
•Beethoven: Sonata No. 23 in F minor for piano, Op. 57, “Appassionata”

At age 19, Alban Berg began studying composition with Arnold Schoenberg, and his sonata shows the influence of Schoenberg’s teaching in its adventurous use of extended harmony and his insistence on a clear and coherent structure in which each of the sonata’s ideas is based on a single, central motive. Of course, the idea of using a motive to structure a piece was one which Schoenberg himself borrowed from the next composer on today’s program, Beethoven. The Appassionata Sonata was composed during one of the most difficult, but productive, periods of Beethoven’s life.  During this time Beethoven began to display bold new harmonic ideas, as in the opening of this sonata, in which the phrase is repeated just a half-step higher, placing the sonata suddenly in ambiguous harmonic territory.  He also increasingly used these motives to structure longer pieces of music, the idea that so influenced Schoenberg and, in turn, Berg.