In the A-flat major sonata, some elements from Beethoven’s earlier music reappear in entirely new contexts. The number of movements in these sonatas, their order and their character all depart from tradition significantly, but even more important are the changes in spirit. The five great sonatas written between 18 stretch the genre in entirely unprecedented ways, and make demands on the performer that far exceed anything found in the earlier works. In them, Beethoven broke a creative silence of several years and changed his style a second time, moving beyond his ‟heroic” middle period into a more private, more transcendent artistic world. Like the late string quartets, the late Beethoven piano sonatas are surrounded by their own mystique.
