Boris Giltburg, Brussels Philharmonic & Kazushi Ono

Beethoven used his sonatas as a laboratory for ideas. Written for intimate settings and far removed from the pressures of the concert hall, they offered a safe haven where he could experiment, test, and innovate to his heart's content. His final sonata is the culmination of all those years of pushing boundaries. Beethoven relentlessly challenges the limits of both instrument and performer, opening the door to a higher, mystical world.

Eighty years later, this fusion of a spiritual world and a radical structure inspired Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. He modeled his Second Symphony entirely on the architecture of Beethoven’s Opus 111: a strict diptych that opens dramatically and with great complexity, moving through a lyrical theme to end in a grandly scaled fugue, with ultimate redemption in an overwhelming apotheosis.