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Music

Music to listen to when you've broken up with a precious friend

Forget music of triumph over suffering, or Mahler's neurotic pain — here's a Beethoven piece of beauty without consolation

14 December 2013

9:00 AM

14 December 2013

9:00 AM

Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata is thrilling and brain-twisting. Its nickname derives from the fact that it was published as a sonata ‘for the hammer-action keyboard’, which just means a piano. But the notion of hammering suits this work. It’s his longest sonata — a late one, No. 29 in B flat, Op.

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