I am aware that Beethoven was a pianist of the first rank and that within the limitations of the sonata form he developed the capacity of the pianoforte. I also have read Richard Strauss's opinion, in his edition of Berlioz's work on instrumentation, that Beethoven treated the orchestra pianistically. Nevertheless, from the modern viewpoint the essential fault of the sonata, Beethoven's sonatas included, seems to me to be that it is too orchestral and not sufficiently _claviermässig_ (pianistic) in character; not sufficiently adapted to the genius of the pianoforte as we know it to-day. It is possible that for the times in which they were composed, the sonatas of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were most pianistic. But as music has become more and more an intimate phase of life, and as our most intimate instrument, the instrument of the household, is the pianoforte, we understand its capacity for the intimate expression of moods and fancies, the lights and shadows of life, as it never was understood before. The modern lover of music, if I may judge his standpoint from my own, feels that while the sonatas of the masters I have named were written for the pianoforte, they were thought out for orchestra, and that even a Beethoven sonata is an engraving for pianoforte of a symphony for orchestra. He composed nine symphonies and thirty-two sonatas. If he had written his nine symphonies for pianoforte, we would have had nine more sonatas. If he had composed his sonatas for orchestra, we would have had thirty-two more symphonies.
This orchestral (as opposed to pianistic) character of the Beethoven sonatas accounts for passages in them so awkwardly written for the instrument that they are difficult to master, and yet, when mastered, are not effective in proportion to their difficulty. Between enlarging the capacity of an instrument through the problems you give the player to solve and writing passages that are awkwardly conceived for it, and hence ineffectual after they have been mastered, there is a great difference. Chopin, Liszt and others pile Pelion on Ossa in their technical requirements of the pianist; but when he has surmounted them, he has climbed a mountain, and from its peak may watch the world at his feet. I think the orchestral character of much that Beethoven wrote for the pianoforte partly accounts for the fact that his sonatas no longer attract the great virtuosos as they formerly did and that the public no longer regards them as the final test of a pianist's rank.