My favourite Beethoven

John Suchet, broadcaster and Beethoven biographer

Piano Sonata No 31, Op 110

If you know what was going on in Beethoven’s life, you hear his music through different ears. No form is more personal than his piano sonatas—his voice, all the more so as his deafness worsened. The slow movement is one of his most melancholy themes; on the manuscript he wrote Gesang—doleful song. Second time around, he breaks it off and repeats a chord nine times, then launches into a huge, vibrant, inverted double fugue, ending in total triumph. He is saying: ‘Yes, I suffered the worst fate befalling