Neefe: Complete Piano Sonatas; Beethoven: Nine Variations for Keyboard on a March by Dressler – review

Susan Kagan(Grand Piano)The Bonn court organist Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748-98) was Beethoven's first important piano, organ and composition teacher, the young pupil writing: "If I ever become a great man yours shall be a share of the credit." Neefe gave him a theme by Ernst Christoph Dressler on which to compose variations and it became the 12-year-old Beethoven's first published work, showing early signs of the fertile imagination that was soon to take flight. Neefe's own sonatas, which st...

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