The frequently played Sonatas op. 2, Nos. 1-3, stem from the time when the young composer took lessons from Joseph Haydn in Vienna and are dedicated to his teacher. After Beethoven’s three early sonatas which he wrote as a youth in Bonn, the so-called “Kurfürsten-Sonaten”, Beethoven started 10 years later, in the mid 1790s, to develop a style independent from the legacy of Mozart and Haydn and presented with his op. 2 his first fully valid piano sonatas.

The acclaimed Beethoven specialist Jon...