Beethoven gave this sonata the unusual title “Sonata quasi una Fantasia,” which it shares, along with its opus number, with the considerably more famous “Moonlight” Sonata. Both sonatas – along with the preceding sonata with the funeral march op. 26, and the three sonatas op. 31 soon to follow – usher in Beethoven’s conquest of new musical territory in this genre. With a complex structure that oscillates between fantasia and sonata, op. 27 no. 1 has long presented pianists with great interpretive challenges that, once they have been overcome, bring to light a true jewel. G. Henle Publishers now also offers this sonata in a new edition, with proven fingering and interpretive suggestions by Murray Perahia and edited by the team of Beethoven experts Gertsch and Perahia. Norbert Gertsch (Herausgeber) Murray Perahia (Herausgeber, Fingersatz) Urtext Edition, paperbound