DESCRIPTION:
Coming 5 years after the morbidly dramatic Appassionata, the Op.78 sonata could not present a more striking contrast to its predecessor. Despite its slight two-movement structure, it appears that Beethoven thought of this work as highly as he did the Appassionata, and not without reason.

The first movement of this sonata is remarkably tender and lyrical, and features one of Beethoven's loveliest run-on melodies. It's notable its highly cellular nature: the first subject, for example, is comprised of a motif in quarter notes, a motif in sixteenths, and another in triplets, yet all these motifs run together in a completely natural way so that there isn't any real "transitional" material. There's also the fact that Beethoven opens the work with a beautifiul cantabile melody in four bars which never recurs throughout the work and serves no formal function. Its only warrant is purely psychological: it prepares and contains the entire emotional landscape of the first movement (Mozart too could write introductions like this), and almost becomes the slow movement the piece is missing. In a weird way, you listen to the whole first movement waiting for that first melody to come back, and it never does: this gives the otherwise overwhelming sweetness of the first movement a slightly wistful edge. In general the whole movement is devoid of a sense of conflict: instead it's built around a sense of disintegration and re-integration.The last thing to note is how the tiny three note-motif at 0:20, the upbeat to the first time, binds the movement together (both its rhythm and structural shape are motivically highly influential).

The second movement is one of Beethoven's unapologetic comic romps. It has an odd structure, to start with, and doesn't really fit neatly into typical rondo or sonata-rondo form (in the notes below I'm just indicated where the main ideas are, and you can decide for yourself what formal structure it has!) The first phrase is divided into 6 parts, which go forte-piano-forte-piano and so on, and is exceptionally harmonically deceptive (we open with an Italian augmented 6th chord, and just as we start getting certain about the F# tonality, the second phrase enters in B, though it also begins with an ambiguous diminished 7th chord.) The third main idea of this movement consists of schizophrenic vacillation between major and minor (7:47), and at the end of the movement there is another harmonic joke: after a florid dominant 7th, Beethoven prepares us to expect the tonic, but no -- he emphasises yet again an absurd augmented chord: 9:32. The figuration of this movement is also striking: the second main idea consists of a sparse and direct bass line overlaid with slurred sixteenths, which can be played in an exaggerated acciacciatura fashion to resemble chirps or twittering (see 7:12 for one of the most odd effects you'll ever come across in a sonata) or in a more extroverted fashion (see 17:11). And the episodes in this movement are punctuated by increasingly ridiculous cadenzas based on the slurred-sixteenth figuration: they keep growing longer and longer, and eventually come to incorporate some plainly silly hand-crossing: 8:47.

MVT I, Adadio cantabile - Allegro ma non troppo
INTRODUCTION -- 00:00
EXPOSITION
00:20 -- Theme 1 (note opening upbeat/dotted-rhythm + rising third motif ["opening motif"], which is actually implied in the introduction)
00:35 -- Opening motif
00:47 -- Theme 2, introduced suddenly via a "wrong note". Note its cellular structure (like that of Theme 1)
01:13 -- A long-term anticipation of the second movement's first theme
DEVELOPMENT
02:35 -- Theme 1
02:44 -- Development of the opening motif
02:48 -- The opening motif's rhythm in LH, the rhythm of Theme 2's first cell in RH
RECAPITULATION -- 03:10

MVT II, Allegro Vivace
07:03 -- Theme 1 (note the rhythmic similarity to the opening motif)
07:12 -- Theme 2 -- a cartoonish scamper up the keyboard
07:20 -- Cadenza (This isn't a theme per se, and you can see this as an extension of Theme 2, but it starts to play an increasingly individual role in the movement)
07:27 -- Theme 1
07:36 -- Theme 2
07:43 -- Cadenza, inverted
07:47 -- Theme 3 (note shift between major and minor)
08:01 -- Cadenza
08:11 -- Theme 1 (If you see this as a sonata-rondo the development might start here, in the subdominant)
08:21 -- Theme 2
08:29 -- Cadenza, inverted
08:33 -- Theme 3
08:47 -- Cadenza
08:59 -- Theme 1
09:10 -- Right when you think theme 2 should enter, we slip into a sort-of coda. Note the inversions of the opening motif which recur, and how twice at the end we come to rest on a dominant 7th (at 9:24 and 9:29) which does not resolve to the tonic.