There's no getting around it...as violinist Aaron Berofsky and I get ready for the third and final concert of our Beethoven sonata cycle in Ann Arbor this Wednesday evening (May 14), I still have to admit that I still find the 9th sonata, the famous "Kreutzer," the most challenging of all Beethoven's violin sonatas. Mostly that's speaking from a technical standpoint, but the middle movement also presents some big interpretive questions as well. Stamina is needed, too; it's really the only middle-period Beethoven violin sonata, the only one of the ten that could be said to be kindred spirit to the "Waldstein" and "Appassionata" piano sonatas, or the Op. 59 quartets. And as gassing as the piano part is at times, it's the relentless physicality of the violin part...surely unprecendented in its time...that is even more striking.

The violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, to whom the Sonata is dedicated, never once played it. Beethoven originally wrote the work for George Bridgetower, who was of mixed West Indian and German parentage and who lived most of his life in England. Beethoven's original jesting dedication to Bridgetower read "Sonata per uno mulattico lunattico." Later, the two had a falling-out, Beethoven re-dedicating it to Kreutzer, who promptly declared the work unplayable.

George Bridgetower [credit: British Museum]

More of the story about the Beethoven 9th Violin Sonata here. And you can read much more about the remarkable life of George Bridgetower on this site.