to welcome you to a new sequence of

Five Minutes on the Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven.

The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven is

one of - probably - one of the most popular

pieces ever written. And it is amazing

that the title was not given by the

composer himself.

Whoever invented it, invented it for

eternity but it is not from Beethoven.

In fact it is one of the reasons why the

piece is in my view so often played in a

very artificial manner: dreamy, moonlight...

If the beginning is dreamy and reminds

someone of the moonlight why not?

But the minute you get this new voice

which is a marshal - slow but marshal

In fact it is not uninteresting to

compare this with the music that Mozart

wrote in Don Giovanni -in his opera Don Giovanni

where Don Giovanni stabs the

commendatory, he falls to the ground

wounded and then comes the music

It's exactly the same. I think - I'm not

sure but I think - somebody told me once

that in Beethoven's sketches there were a

few bars of Don Giovanni written and

then simply transposed semitone - means a

semitone higher and then you have the

beginning of the Moonlight Sonata. Instead of

you have

Maybe it has something to do

with death, who knows.

This is a kind of funeral march rhythm

This is why I prefer a rather steady and

marshall rhythm together with this soft accompaniment.

In any case right or wrong

it has become one of the most popular

pieces and was in my youth - every second concert.

Now as if people are a little

tired of it

it's not so often played.

The second movement of course has nothing to do with this.

The title Moonlight or what

I think is rather more a funeral music

has only to do with the first movement.

The second movement is a very...

very simple minuet or scherzo and the last movement is

very tempestuous

And the movement ends in total acceleration.

Thank you for watching these five

minutes on the Moonlight Sonata of

Beethoven and if you have any comments

I would be very happy to read them and

maybe reply to them in the later sequence

Thank you very much