Dublin Piano Series: Sonatas

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata in B-flat major, Op. 106 “Hammerklavier”
Alexander Bernstein, piano

Franz Liszt: Piano Sonata in B Minor, S178/R21
Lance Coburn, piano

The great Bohemian-born pianist Rudolf Serkin once stated that plying Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” was like climbing Mount Everest, and in the first concert of the 2026 Dublin Piano Series, pianists Alexander Bernstein and Lance Coburn most certainly scale the heights of two extraordinary and compelling piano sonatas.

Composed between 1817 and 1818, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 29 in B-flat Major, Op 106, “Hammerklavier,” is the composer’s most ambitious - and by some degree the longest - piano sonata he composed. This gargantuan work is performed alongside Liszt’s powerful and heroic masterpiece, the B Minor Sonata, which demonstrates in the composer’s own words that “the ten fingers of a human being suffice to reproduce the harmonies that are played by the combination of the combination of hundreds of musicians.