Next to the Moonlight and the Waldstein Sonatas, the Appassionata is no doubt the most celebrated of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and claims, with the latter two works, a new high point in the composer’s piano oeuvre. With even Lenin weighing in with the words: “Such miraculous works can only be made by man,” what is there left to say!
Curiously, the nickname Appassionata appeared for the first time in 1838 in a transcription of the sonata for piano four-hands published by the Cranz Verlag in Hamburg; although this designation did not originate with Beethoven, it is nowadays inseparably connected with the work. It fits splendidly with the dramatic contrasts of the first movement, the solemnity and inwardness of the second and the demonic passion of the third.