Stephan Möller / Beethoven 32×32

This concert is part of a four day concert series. There will be a different program each night as Stephan plays through all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas.

In December 2020, the musical world would have celebrated Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th anniversary. Due to the pandemic, almost all events of the big celebration were cancelled.

In my repertoire, Beethoven has always played a central role. I have performed his 32 piano sonatas, the “New Testament of the Piano Repertoire” (Hans von Bülow), frequently in complete cycles over the last 28 years. The first two of these performances, in Vienna and Bremen, have taken place in 1994; the latest one at the Vienna Musikverein in 2021. Over time, the temporal duration of these cycles has been compressed, from the initial two months to just two days!

On the occasion of the 2020 anniversary, I had planned a special concert event worldwide, featuring Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, the achievement of the lifetime of a genius, in the most compact shape, so the audience would have the opportunity to receive this important chapter of music history in the shortest possible time. This would be in four concerts of 2.5 hours each! These four concerts could be happening in two, three or four days.

The “American episode” of these concerts was scheduled for September and October, 2020. Starting in Lima, Peru, Quito, Ecuador and Monterrey, Mexico, performances in seven cities of the US had been secured: New York (Carnegie Hall), Princeton NJ, Chicago IL, Albuquerque NM, Jewell IA, Knoxville TN and Denver CO would have taken place. A sequence of European performances were about to follow: Vienna (Musikverein), Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Basel, Romania, Albania and Kosovo were on the list. The Asian series (Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Malaysia) would have concluded that year, and for spring 2021 a tour to Australia had been projected, as well as one performance in South Africa. Over the entire concert season 2020/21, I would have come up with a total of 32 performances of the 32 sonatas, hence the name of the project.

In fact, only five of the projected 32 performances could still take place in 2020/21: In Basel, Bremen, Yokohama and Tokyo, just before the second “lockdown” was implemented, and in Vienna in May 2021, right after the re-opening of the concert-halls.

Now, that the worldwide health problems have apparently calmed down, I will resume my performances in 2023, trying to make up as many of the lost performances as possible. Beethoven’s mighty message, most prominently expressed in his Ninth Symphony by Schiller’s words, must be heard: “Alle Menschen werden Brüder”, “Let all mankind be as brothers and sisters!”

Stephan Möller first gained pianistic prominence as a prizewinner at the 1985 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna. Since then his busy concert schedule has taken him to Japan, China, North and South America as well as all over Europe. 1983 through 1989, he worked with Herbert von Karajan and other world-renowned conductors at the Salzburg Festival. Besides performing the entire standard repertoire, Stephan Möller has concentrated on the interpretation of the Viennese Classics, Beethoven in particular.

Among Stephan Möller’s CD recordings, there are such rarities as Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge”, played fourhands with himself on a computer-assisted Bösendorfer concert-grand, and the complete original piano works by Richard Wagner. His recording of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas is work in progress.

Born 1955 in Hamburg, Germany, Stephan Möller received his degrees as a pianist and orchestra conductor at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, Austria. His important teachers were Peter Heilbut in Hamburg, Kurt Seibert in Bremen and Hans Leygraf in Salzburg. From 1990 until his retirement in 2020, Stephan Möller held a teaching position at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria.

Since 2020, Stephan Möller is on the piano faculty of the Richard Wagner Conservatory in Vienna. He is frequently invited for hold masterclasses, lectures, and international competition juries at home and abroad. He is president of the “Vienna International Pianists” association and their successful festival, the “VIP Academy”, vice-president of the “Gesellschaft für Musiktheater”, and a board member of the “Wiener Beethovengesellschaft”. In 2009, he founded the “International Rosario Marciano Piano Competition”.