Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas

I took Jonathan Biss’ couㄱse which is exploring Beethoven’s piano sonata. I chose this coursera course, because I like classical music some time to time, but I did not know much about classic. That’s the biggest reason that I register this course. However, before I wrote about some opinion or class, I want to tell you some tips. If you don’t know much about classical music or you’re English is not that well, I suggest to take another course first. This course’s level of the language is very high, and the presenter used many knowledge or term in classic. I want to understand this course fully, but I had some difficulties to understand this. So, I admit that I refer to text which is ‘Key point of lecture ‘ by Jonathan Biss. When I watch this course, it helped me a lot to understand. I chose 7th course, Op.57: The “Appassionata”. I chose this class, because I’ve heard this before, so I thought it could be familiar for me. Actually, this sonata became really famous in Korea last year. Last year, there is a famous drama called ‘Secret love affair’. In this drama, the main story was love, but it happened in classic music industry. Naturally, lots of great classical music became well known to many viewers. ‘Appassionata’ is one of them. The main male role played third movement very passionately. I liked this sonata very much when I saw this scene in the drama. So I thought this could be fun to learn about this. Jonathan started his course with explanation of reason why many audiences love this ‘Appassionata’. He also said Beethoven’s favorite sonata of 23 other sonatas is this one. This sonata is consisted of three movements and he progresses his course explaining these. He said it represents the tragic mode, and it is quite unusual to finish it as maintaining this tragic mode. I think it is one of the reasons that make this sonata really special and impressive. Also, I like the first movement, because it is very magnificent. He also tells me that first movement is masterpiece, and its intense is like noose-tightening using Neapolitan. It was impressive that he mentioned Beethoven using this method again in Third movement, so the intense keep going like a noose-tightening. It was quite difficult to understand the while course, but those things are the impressive things in the course. I did not recommend to the students who don’t know much about the classic, because the terms are so difficult. However, like me, of you have interesting sonatas, it could be great to challenge. You can also hear great piano performance by presenter, Jonathan Biss. I want to recommend who love classic music, and if I have a chance I want to finish this course with knowledge of classic.