This year, Rudolf Buchbinder presents Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, a work that was viewed with scepticism when it was first published in 1807 – “In the first movement of this sonata, he has once again released many evil spirits, as one is already familiar with from other great sonatas of his”, was famously grumbled by a critic in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung. Beethoven himself, however, considered the piece one of his best. At the very latest, thanks to an enterprising publisher who gave it the epithet “Appassionata” in 1838, it went on to become regarded as the epitome of pianistic virtuosity and expressivity.

The melody of the French folk song “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman” is known in German-speaking countries as the song “Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann”. In English, we are familiar with it as the tune behind “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”. In the original, a beautiful brunette confesses her love of a certain Silvandre to her mother. What begins as an easy-to-sing-along folk song becomes a succession of pianistic challenges and surprises in Mozart’s Twelve Variations – the longing for love included – that finally culminate in a virtuoso finale. Schubert’s last four impromptus are also considerably more complex than the term first suggests, denoting a short improvisation or a surprising idea. Robert Schumann even thought he recognised a four-movement sonata in the four individual pieces composed by Schubert about a year before his death.