Indeed, if Professor Ehlert had been perfectly sincere I am not quite
sure that he would have excepted Beethoven's sonatas. Although they
teem with great and beautiful ideas, these sonatas are not really
adapted to the intrinsic nature of the pianoforte, and hence fail to
arouse the enthusiasm of those whose taste has been formed by the
works of Chopin and Schumann. It was no doubt an instinctive antipathy
to Beethoven's unpianistic style (if the adjective be permissible),
which prevented Chopin from admiring Beethoven as deeply as he did
some other composers, whom he would have admitted to be his inferiors.
And Beethoven himself does not seem to have regarded his pianoforte
works with the same satisfaction as his other compositions. At least,
he wrote the following curious sentence in a corner of one of his
sketch books in 1805; "Heaven knows why my pianoforte music always
makes the worst impression on me, especially when it is played badly."
He must have felt that his ideas found a much more appropriate and
adequate expression in the orchestra than on the piano. Not being a
radical innovator he did not, in his treatment of the pianoforte, go
beyond Clementi; and so it remained for Chopin to show the world that
the pianoforte, if properly treated, will yield tones whose exquisite
sensuous beauty can hardly be surpassed by any combination of
orchestral instruments.
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