Valentina Lisitsa, piano - Beethoven Moonlight Sonata

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The Ukrainian-born Valentina Lisitsa has been receiving rave reviews since making her Mostly Mozart Festival debut at Lincoln Centers Avery Fisher Hall. Ms. Lisitsa is at home in a vast repertoire ranging from Bach and Mozart to Shostakovich and Bernstein and her orchestral repertory boasts more than forty concerti, all of which have been performed. Born in Kiev, Ms. Lisitsa began to study piano at the age of three and performed her first solo recital at four. After her studies - first in Lysenko School of Music and then in Kiev Conservatory she moved to the United States and shortly thereafter became a citizen. She has performed in the world's most prestigious concert venues, and among recent collaborations have been tours with Sao Paolo Symphony, the New Zealand Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic and Prague Chamber Orchestras.

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The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor "Quasi una fantasia", Op. 27, No. 2, by Ludwig van Beethoven, popularly known as the Moonlight Sonata (Mondscheinsonate in German), was completed in 1801. It is rumored to be dedicated to his pupil, 17-year-old Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, with whom Beethoven was, or had been, in love.

The name "Moonlight" Sonata derives from an 1832 description of the first movement by music critic Ludwig Rellstab, who compared it to moonlight shining upon Lake Lucerne.

Beethoven included the phrase "Quasi una fantasia" (Italian: Almost a fantasy) in the title partly because the sonata does not follow the traditional sonata pattern where the first movement is in regular sonata form, and where the three or four movements are arranged in a fast-slow-[fast]-fast sequence. Instead, the Moonlight sonata possesses an end-weighted trajectory; the climax is held off until the third movement. To be sure, the deviation from traditional sonata form is intentional. In his analysis of the Moonlight sonata, German critic Paul Bekker states that The opening sonata-allegro movement gave the work a definite character from the beginning which succeeding movements could supplement but not change. Beethoven rebelled against this determinative quality in the first movement. He wanted a prelude, an introduction, not a proposition. By placing the most dramatic form (sonata form) at the end of the piece, Beethoven could magnify the drama inherent in the form.