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Nikolai Demidenko

Allegro
Allegretto
Presto

Beethoven dedicated the three sonatas of his Op. 10 to the Countess Anna Margarete von Browne. Her husband, Count von Browne-Camus, was an officer (of Irish descent) in the Russian Imperial Service in Vienna and himself a generous patron of Beethoven's between 1797 and 1803. He received a number of dedications of his own and, following the gift of these sonatas to his wife, he presented the composer with a riding horse, which Beethoven characteristically forgot until he received a large bill for fodder.

Op. 10 No. 2 is the shortest among Beethoven's early sonatas. He dispenses with a slow movement, instead dividing a Haydnesque first movement and a mock fugal finale with an Allegretto that has the characteristics of a minuet, for all its minor-key earnestness.

Matthew Rye

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