Piano Sonata No.17, Op.31 No.2

Composed in 1802, the year of the Heiligenstadt Testament in which Beethoven confronted his deafness, this sonata is known as The Tempest. The name rests on a story from his assistant Anton Schindler, who claimed that when asked about the piece Beethoven replied, "read Shakespeare's Tempest." Schindler is now known to have fabricated a great deal, so the anecdote is treated with suspicion. The nickname has survived anyway, helped by the music itself. Its first movement repeatedly halts for passages that imitate a singer's recitative, as though the instrument were trying to speak.