No female interpreter before you has ever undertaken such a recording project. There has been no lack of wonderful female instrumentalists throughout the history of music, but they are certainly lacking in the history of recorded music. Erica Morini is one of the great, Ida Haendel never recorded Beethoven's sonatas, and Ginette Neveu died before she could carry out a similar project. My first recollections of these sonatas are connected with one performer. No, which is unfortunate from a musical point of view.
Every sonata contains a story, and they are all interconnected.
These connections, which embody Beethoven's stylistic development, are endangered by the concert pauses between the sonatas and the spiritual digressions that result. It is a colossal undertaking that reflects fifteen years of Beethoven's life. Lambert Orkis and I have defended both the advantages and the unpleasantness presented by the length of the first program and the brevity of the third program. The first five sonatas are performed during the first evening. They show the influence of Haydn and Mozart.