Breaking news: Intermediate repertoire brings joy and satisfaction.

At times, I've been guilty of downplaying Beethoven's sonatinas, in addition to other intermediate repertoire.  However, while teaching both sonatinas several times in the past couple of years, I'm beginning to (re?)discover the genius of these little gems.  Never miss a chance to bring the same excitement and joy to an intermediate piece that you experience in a symphony or sonata!  Plus, there's a freshness and clarity in much intermediate repertoire that is there to be enjoyed if we just stop to listen.

Enough preaching - a couple of examples.  First movement of Beethoven's F-major sonatina: brilliant motivic development.  M. 21 and m. 27, for example.  A simple four-note pattern in m. 28 morphs into a sequence of its own at m. 34.  Perfect balance in the opening eight bars.  Even a quintessential Beethoven coda, proportionately lengthy compared to the rest of the movement. All of these things remind me of aspects of Beethoven's writing in his large-scale works, but in this piece anyone with just a few years of piano study can explore Beethoven's genius with the same sense of wonder and appreciation as a professional pianist playing the Eroica variations.  Amazing.