Tag: Yamaha Music

How music inspires: no ordinary musician

 

 

Music taking shape…Internationally acclaimed concert pianist Lee Jae Phang performing The Piano Sonatas Part V.  A Yamaha Music Malaysia event,  the pianist’s virtuosity continues to entertain and inspire his audience. The event is part of a series on Beethoven’s legendary sonatas.  This part kicked off at Yamaha Music Malaysia in Kelana Jaya on Sept 20, 2025, followed by Luxury Piano Lounge at LS Music, Great Eastern Mall, Jalan  Ampang, Kuala Lumpur on Sept 21, 2025, Luxury Piano Lounge @ Digital Music Systems, Prima Tanjung, Penang on sept 28, 2025 and Luxury Piano Lounge @ Impian Emas Music Centre, Paradigm Mall Johor Bahru on Oct 5, 2025.

By Foong Pek Yee

foongpekyee@gmail.com

sept 25, 2025

Photos:  courtesy of Lee Jae Phang

His deep love and fascination for Beethoven’s music…Lee Jae has recorded almost all of Beethoven’s 32 sonatas and published on his YouTube channel.

He won the 1st Beethoven Performance Award of the BPSE & Beethoven in Altaussee Festival 2016’s prize in Austria.

A story behind the music …Lee Jae gave a brief introduction on the piano sonatas at Yamaha Music Malaysia in Kelana Jaya on Sept 20, 2025. 

Piano Sonata in G minor, Op.49, No. 1

Piano Sonata in G major, Op. 49, No.2

Piano Sonata in E – flat major, Op. 31, No. 3

Piano Sonata in F major, Op. 54

Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 57

(‘Appassionata”)

The two piano sonatas Op. 49 date from the final years of the 1790s even though they were published several years later.
Beethoven’s brother, Kaspar, deciding the sonatas were worthy of publication,
presented them to a publishing house without Beethoven’s knowledge.
Both sonatas are small pieces of two movements.
The first sonata is the more sombre of the two. It opens with a first movement in G minor marked Andante. The second movement (a Rondo marked Allegro) begins in the tonic major. However, the light character of the opening becomes more intense with the second theme, which is cast back in G minor.
In the second sonata, both movements are in G major. With the major key comes musical feelings of confidence, aplomb and a touch of bravura.
The second movement of this sonata (marked “Tempo di menuetto”) shares the melodic theme of the Minuet of Beethoven’s Septet for Winds Op. 20.
The Septet was written after the sonata, but it was published first, hence the lower opus number. It became one of Beethoven’s most famous pieces during his lifetime, much to his dismay.
Luckily for us, and for many students wanting to take their first steps into
Beethoven’s piano sonatas, his brother got to the sonatas before they became lost to posterity. The fact that Beethoven used the Minuet theme in his Septet and left the sonata unpublished suggests that he might have wanted to scrap the piano sonata altogether.
I think that the sonatas are wonderful pieces, and we have Kaspar to thank for his quick thinking.
The next sonata that I will perform is the sonata in E-flat major, Op. 31, No. 3.
Composed in 1802, it is the final sonata of this opus number set. Those of you who were present for the recital in Part IV will remember that I performed the first sonata of Op. 31 then.
Unlike the first two sonatas of the set, however, this sonata is cast in 4 movements.
Throughout the sonata, Beethoven maintains a playful jocularity. In fact, all 4
movements are cast in the major mode, with 3 of them in the tonic key.
A distinguishing feature of this sonata is the fact that Beethoven does not write an Adagio slow movement. The slowest movement is the lyrical Minuet third movement.
Another interesting structural feature to note is that instead of replacing the Minuet with a Scherzo (which is something he pioneered in his symphonies and early piano sonatas in the Minuet and Trio movements), Beethoven writes a Scherzo second movement in this sonata and follows it with a Minuet third movement. We are not forced to choose between the two.

In the opening bars of the first movement, Beethoven’s harmonic daring is evident.
He actually begins the sonata with a pre-dominant ii7b chord.
If I did not reveal the tonality of the sonata, we as listeners will not know that we are in E-flat major until the sixth bar!
The final movement of this sonata is likely the source of this sonata’s nickname “The Hunt”. It is filled with allusions to horn calls.
We begin the second half of today’s recital with an interesting and often neglected piano sonata – the piano sonata in F major, Op. 54.
Part of the reason that it seldom features on recital programmes is the fact that it is both preceded and followed by two gigantic piano sonatas. The “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” sonatas very effectively eclipse it with their length and prestige. It definitely does not help that this sonata also does not have a nickname.
Like the sonata in E minor, Op. 90 from Part IV, the Op. 54 sonata is in 2
movements.
The first movement of this sonata is marked “In tempo d’un menuetto”. The opening theme could not be simpler in its construction: in the first 4 bars, we are presented with three increasingly higher statements of the same rhythmic motif in F major.
Just as we grow accustomed to it, the simplicity and elegance of the music is rudely interrupted by a bombastic canon in octaves in both hands.
The movement proceeds with increasingly ornamented statements of the opening theme, finishing with a Coda.
The second movement is a moto perpetuo, also in F major. There are many
adventurous musical twists and turns (modulations to remote keys such as A major at the start of the Development section) and the movement concludes with a coda in a faster tempo. This idea is taken up again, as you will soon hear, in the finale of the next sonata.
The final sonata of today’s recital, the sonata in F minor, Op. 57, nicknamed the “Appassionata”, is one of Beethoven’s most beloved sonatas.
I will keep the introduction short as I am sure that the emotional power of the piece speaks for itself.
After the completion of Op. 54 and 57, Beethoven wrote no further piano sonatas for 4 years, his longest absence from the genre at the time.
The nickname “Appassionata” is apt because it refers to the tempestuous character of this sonata. In fact, this is one of the handful of works by Beethoven that begins and ends in tragedy. Beethoven often follows the pattern of darkness leading into light, but sometimes the darkness triumphs at the end. The other prominent examples of works beginning and ending in a dark mood are the violin sonata in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2 and the “Pathétique” piano sonata, Op. 13.
The “Appassionata” sonata is written in 3 movements.
The second movement of this sonata is a set of variations on a theme in D-flat major.
At the end of the final variation, Beethoven resolves the dominant chord onto a diminished seventh chord. There’s so much uncertainty in that chord that pretty much anything can follow it, and Beethoven does not disappoint us.
We are launched into the final movement, which is a near perpetual motion
movement, similar to the finale of the Op. 54 sonata. This movement ends with a spiral into the abyss of descending arpeggios in F minor.

Yes, Beethoven

 

Building on his deep love and fascination for Ludwig van Beethoven’s music … Malaysian concert pianist Lee Jae Phang has performed 16 sonatas in public from memory!  He marked another milestone on May 24, 2025 with his recital Beethoven The Piano Sonatas Part IV that won him a standing ovation at Yamaha Music Malaysia in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, followed by another recital at the   LS Music Yamaha, Kuala Lumpur the next day.

By Foong Pek Yee

foongpekyee@gmail.com

June 2, 2025.

Photos: Courtesy of Lee Jae Phang.

Program for the 91-minute- long recital Beethoven The Piano Sonatas Part lV :

Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 7 (32 mins)

Sonata in G major, Op. 31, No. 1 (26 mins)

intermission

Sonata in E minor, Op. 90 (14 mins)

Sonata in C minor, Op. 13 ‘Pathétique’ (19 mins)

Lee Jae’s profound interpretation of Beethoven’s music and deep connection with the composer led him record almost all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas totaling more than 11 hours of music, and the masterpieces are available on his YouTube channel.

The international award- winning pianist has performed across Europe and Asia, and he won, among others, the Audience Prize and the 1st Beethoven Performance Award of the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe & Beethoven in Altaussee  Festival 2016 prize in Austria.

Lee Jae began studying seriously for a career in music when he was awarded a full scholarship to study as a specialist pianist at the Wells Cathedral School (WCS) in Somerset, England, UK.

He continued his musical education at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester in September 2012 and five years later graduated with a Master of Music in Performance with Distinction.

In 2017, Lee Jae was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Schools of Music with Distinction.

A concert pianist, teacher and writer…Lee Jae performed Beethoven The Piano Sonatas Part IV on a Yamaha S6 Grand Piano at Yamaha Music Malaysia in Petaling Jaya on May 24, 2025.

A topic of interest … How to practice piano was raised at the end of the recital.

On Beethoven’s music … Lee Jae gave a brief introduction of the sonatas at the start of the recital.

An in-depth analysis of the sonatas by Lee Jae.

Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 7
This sonata was published in 1796 as ‘Grande Sonate’. The title is appropriate because it is indeed the longest of Beethoven’s early piano sonatas.

It was also called ‘Grande Sonate’ because it was published alone, and not as part of a set. Sonatas Nos. 1 to 3 form the Op. 2 set while Sonatas Nos. 5 to 7 form the Op. 10 set.

The Op. 7 sonata was composed during Beethoven’s visit to the Keglevich palace in November 1796 and it is dedicated to his piano student Countess Babette of Keglevich.

The first movement is grand and features extremely contrasting characters and intriguing modulations. It was probably inspired by Haydn’s final piano sonata in the same key, written only 2 years earlier.

The second movement starts off with a somewhat fragmented opening. The silences in the opening bars give the music a sense of space, contemplation, and most importantly, deep expression.

The middle section of this movement features the same pizzicato accompaniment above a chorale-like melody which we heard in the Largo movement of the A major sonata, Op. 2, No. 2.

The third movement fools us with the simplicity of its opening theme.

In the middle “Minore” section, Beethoven paints a stormy and threatening landscape in the tonic minor of Eb minor.

The fourth and final movement is a Rondo movement with a lyrical theme.

Listen out for the unexpected modulation to E major near the end.

This is perhaps another nod to Haydn, his former composition teacher who cast the second movement of this final sonata in the same key.

Sonata in G major, Op. 31, No. 1
Unlike Op. 7, this sonata is part of a set of three sonatas, which were published together in 1803.

The G major sonata itself was composed between 1801 and 1802.

The important thing to note about this sonata is that it is very un-Beethovenian.

This is one of Beethoven’s truly funny creations.

In the first few bars of the opening movement, the listener is made to believe that the pianist cannot play chords neatly together.

Beethoven achieves this by repeatedly instructing the pianist’s RH to anticipate the LH a semiquaver early.

In the second movement, Beethoven parodies Italian lyric opera. Beethoven’s usual concentration and economical writing takes a back seat in this movement: there are ornaments everywhere and even two show-off cadenzas.

In the final movement, also a rondo, Beethoven continues the light mood of the first two movements.

The theme of the movement could be said to be a Gassenhauer tune.

Gassenhauer was the name given to tunes that are so simple that everybody could sing them on the streets, or in the “Gassen”, which is German for lanes or alleys.

My favourite anecdote about this sonata comes from its publication.

Beethoven had sent this sonata to the Swiss publisher Nägeli in Zurich to be printed.

Due to the sonata’s unusual nature, the publisher probably thought that Beethoven had made a mistake and added 4 bars to the start of the coda in the first movement.

Furthermore, it seems that the proofs of the first edition were not sent to Beethoven, and Nägeli published the sonata without giving Beethoven a chance to offer corrections.

When the obligatory copy arrived at Beethoven’s home, he was in the midst of composing.

Ferdinand Ries, a friend and pupil of Beethoven’s, relates that Beethoven asked him to play the sonata through while Beethoven himself remained seated at his desk.

There was an unusual number of errors which already made Beethoven impatient.

When Ries got to those four extra bars, and I quote Ries now,
‘Beethoven jumped up in a rage, came running to me, half pushed me away from the pianoforte, shouting, “where the devil do you find that?”

One can scarcely imagine his amazement and rage when he saw the printed notes.

I received the commission to make a record of all the errors and at once sent the sonatas to Simrock in Bonn, who was to make a reprint and call it “Edition trés correcte” (“Very correct edition”).

Sonata in E minor, Op. 90.
This sonata was written in the summer of 1814 and published in June the following year.

With this sonata, we skip ahead to the very end of Beethoven’s middle compositional period and the start of his late compositional period.

The late period works feature among other things a greater concern with lyricism that is now combined with a newfound intimacy and delicacy.

There is also a greater interest in counterpoint. In the Op. 101 sonata which I performed in the previous recital for example, the whole middle section of the final movement was a fugue.

In this sonata Op. 90, he does not write a fugue, but I would like to invite you to listen out for traces of Bach’s influence here.

Like the G major sonata I performed earlier, there’s a nice story that accompanies this sonata.

Beethoven dedicated the sonata to Prince Moritz von Lichnowsky, who was a friend and benefactor. Beethoven also dedicated the “Eroica” piano variations to him.

Anyway, another gentleman named Anton Schindler, who was a friend and biographer of Beethoven’s, reported in his 1842 book titled “Beethoven in Paris” that the sonata’s two movements were originally to be titled “Kampf zwischen Kopf und Herz” (“A Contest between Head and Heart”) and “Conversation mit der Geliebten” (“Conversation with the Beloved”).

Schindler wrote that the titles refer to Moritz’s romance with a woman he was thinking of marrying.

This lady eventually became his second wife.

Later studies by scholars showed that the story was almost certainly invented by Schindler, at least in part, and that he went so far as to forge an entry in one of the conversation books to validate the anecdote.

Sonata in C minor, Op. 13 ‘Pathétique’
It was composed in 1798, published the year after, and dedicated to Moritz’s older brother: Prince Karl von Lichnowsky.

The publisher was impressed by the sonata’s tragic sonorities that he named it “Grande sonate pathétique”.

The word “pathétique” comes from the French and means “creating sad and strong emotions”.

It also comes from the Greek word “pathetikos”, which means “capable of emotion, impassioned, sensitive”.

This sonata was an important success for Beethoven as it sold well and helped develop his reputation as a composer and not just as an extraordinary pianist.

Musicologists have over the years speculated on whether this sonata may have been inspired by Mozart’s C minor piano sonata, K. 457.

The theme from Beethoven’s second movement is remarkably like one of the themes in Mozart’s second movement.

Bach’s Partita No. 2 may also have inspired Beethoven.

The opening fanfare of the Partita is also marked “Grave” and the “Andante” which follows begins with the same four notes that feature in important points in Beethoven’s sonata.