Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas

"""Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas: A Handbook for Performers is an excellent reference book, which helps any reader to understand Beethoven's creative genius, his innovations during the time in which he lived, and unusual facets of his personal life and character. For serious piano students and performers, Gordon's Handbook is an inspiration for teachers and performers to play more of Beethoven's sonatas and to have more knowledge about each one to play them better for an audience. It also helps students who hope to be performers. Kudos to Stewart Gordon for a book that deserves to be in every library of musicians who love Beethoven and his compositions."" --American Music Teacher ""This friendly, helpful, refreshingly nondoctrinaire guide to performing Beethoven is quite far from what appears to be a hornet's nest atmosphere in American musicology today. It is addressed to thinking pianists who wish to make up their own minds about what Beethoven may have wanted in his sonatas. It is a book of choices, reasonably argued."" -- International Piano Magazine ""Although there are moments, here and there, that synthesize research and approaches to the sonatas (especially chapters 1-3), the rest of the book presentsan expanded version of the author's excellent and thoughtful critical edition combined with Romantic commonplaces about the universality of music, debatable claims about Beethoven's intentions, and peripheral background information. In order to appreciate Gordon's observations about Beethoven, performers and readers would be best served by paying careful attention to the extensive commentary"" --Notes"