Next to the Moonlight and the Waldstein Sonatas, the Appassionata is no doubt the most celebrated of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and claims, with the latter two works, a new high point in the composer’s piano oeuvre. With even Lenin weighing in with the words: “Such miraculous works can only be made by man,” what is there left to say!

Curiously, the nickname Appassionata appeared for the first time in 1838 in a transcription of the sonata for piano four-hands published by the Cranz Verlag in Ha...