The so-called “Kreutzer Sonata” opens with a slow introduction, a cadenza-like entrance for the violin alone. The piano makes a similarly dramatic entrance, and gradually the two instruments outline the interval of a rising half-step that will figure prominently in the first movement. At the Presto, the music explodes forward, and while Beethoven provides calmer episodes along the way, including a chorale-like second subject marked dolce, the burning energy of this Presto opening is never far off: the music whips along on an almost machine-gun-like patter of eighth-notes, and these eventually drive the movement to its abrupt cadence.
Relief comes in the “Andante con variazioni”. The piano introduces the central theme, amiable but itself already fairly complex, and there follow four lengthy variations. The final movement – Presto – returns to the mood of the first. A simple A-major chord is the only introduction, and off the music goes. Beethoven had written this movement, a tarantella, in 1802, intending that it should be the finale of his Violin Sonata in A major, Op. 30, No. 1. But he pulled it out and wrote a new finale for the earlier sonata, and that was a wise decision: this fiery finale would have overpowered that gentle sonata. Here, though, it becomes the perfect conclusion to one of the most powerful pieces of chamber music ever written.
Please listen. Now as violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter performed this music for you:
