Buy Hammerklavier at Tesco

(- Always Giving You Extra - )

Came across this advertising link after a search on Google for "Hammerklavier" (re. Beethoven's piano sonata Op. 106 (was trying to find out the meaning of the word "Hammerklavier").
Try for yourself, you may get the same ad!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ned=us&q=hammerklavier+&btnmeta%3Dsearch%3Dsearch=Search+the+Web

By the way, as I suspected, the name "Hammerklavier" means no more than "Pianoforte"...It's simply a reference to the intended instrument, the piano. And the designation was given to all five late sonatas, as in "for the Hammerklavier", "for the pianoforte", but the label has only stuck with Opus 106.

Errr...Perhaps appropriately? In the sense that Op. 106 seems so much (for me at least) to be "about" the sound of the piano: that wonderful persuasive percussiveness which is forever drawing you in - a gruff, abrasive seduction in to a soundworld from which there is no escape, and for which there is no real resolution. An endless stretching out of possibilities. This, for me, at least is Beethoven's greatest symphony for Hammers, wood and string.

Further programme note information at the Excellent Radio 3 site accompanying their online cycle of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas by Artur Pizzaro