Beethoven’s sonata Op. 90 follows Napoleon’s defeat.

Five years would lapse before another piano sonata appeared since Napoleon’s storming of Vienna. During these years, Beethoven composed his Mass in C, and organized a successful revival of his opera, now called “Fidelio”.
The Opus 90 sonata was composed following the defeat of Napoleon and during the preparations for the 1815 Congress of Vienna – the conference of royals and their functionaries which restored the feudal system over war-ravaged Europe, unleashed the Romantic movement, and ruthlessly suppressed all efforts to replicate the new American model of government in Europe. 
The sonata has two movements, and is played here with great passion by the Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg. [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]