Three Sonatas for piano (G major, D minor, E-flat major) op. 31

The op. 31 piano sonatas were ordered by the Zurich publisher Hans Georg Nägeli for his piano series Repertoire des Clavecinistes. Beethoven agreed to Nägeli's proposal without knowing that his brother Karl was negotiating the same sonatas with the Leipzig publishers Breitkopf & Härtel. A hefty argument developed between the brothers. Ludwig kept his word and sent the pieces to Zurich, a decision he would later bitterly regret. Nägeli's edition was riddled with mistakes, and the publisher even added several measures that Beethoven noticed only by chance. Ferdinand Ries describes the event in his Biographisches Notizen: 'When the corrected document arrived I found Beethoven writing. 'Play the sonatas through', he told me but remained seated at his desk. There were numerous mistakes, which made him very impatient. At the end of the first Allegro of the G-major sonata Nägeli had even added four measures [...]. When I played them, Beethoven jumped up in rage, rushed up to me, pushed me away from the piano and shouted: 'Where in the world is that written?' – When he saw the notes printed this way, his astonishment and indignation were unbelievable.' Beethoven was furious with Nägeli. He initially planned to place an ad in the Leipziger Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung to report the mistakes. But then he decided to have Nikolaus Simrock in Bonn print a new edition of the sonatas with the correct original text. To distinguish the editions, he added the words 'édition très correcte' to the title. (J.R.)