The first movement is quite easy. But in the 3rd movement, things get a litle more complicated. That movement, if you look at the sheet music, you can see that its NOT easy.ÞÐ
With all due respect, the first movement APPEARS to be easy, but controlling those hushed dynamics and making that theme sing is no task for beginners. Expert control and phrasing is required here.
Unfortunately 99% of the students quit before reaching the third measure of the second mvt.
Hello all piano playersI have a question I must have answered, how is the Moonlight Sonata ranked at Level 8+ ? Its one of the easiest pieces of classical music...?
I think the whole sonata is deceptive with regards to it's difficulty. The notes are easy, performing them well is hard. Somehow I find some of Beethoven's more difficult sonatas easier to perform for an audience than the Moonlight.
I first listened to the mp3 file associated with the score and while the performance is very nice, I honestly can't believe it was played without dampers. Am I too long out of touch to appreciate the difficulty of performing it, or is the damper used (with discretion) in this (and other) recordings?
In the Piano Street Urtext we have Beethoven's instruction in Italian:Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamente e senza sordinoIt translates to something like this:This whole movement must be played with the utmost delicacy and without dampers.Since the dampers are removed from the strings by the right pedal it means to keep the right pedal down. It's not perfectly clear if Beethoven meant to keep the pedal down throughout the whole movement whithout shifting between harmonies but even if that's how he played it on the pianos of his times it is certainly not such a brilliant idea on today's modern instruments which has much longer sustain.Andras Schiff discusses this in his London lectures on the 32 Sonatas by Beethoven from 2006. See the link halfway down in this post: https://www.pianostreet.com/blog/piano-news/marathon-men-two-complete-beethoven-sonatas-694/
What's up with answering one year old topics?
The first movement may be easy, but the second movement is difficult to play musically, and the 3rd movement is very difficult to play all around.
I guess lorditachijr felt compelled to offer what was believed to be new information or a unique perspective or even the definitive answer:I just hope the original poster is still monitoring this thread. That could be the pithy, perceptive, insightful assessment he or she was seeking.
I haven't gotten any further than printing the 3rd movement off of Pianostreet.com. It's daunting, to say the least...
There you go again. Can't help it, can you?
It’s not played as a sextuplet but rather a 4:3 rhythm which is hard to do