The Kreutzer Sonata

This afternoon I heard the "Kreutzer Sonata," by Janacek, based on the "Kreutzer Sonata" by Tolstoy, which in turn was based on"the Kreutzer Sonata" by Beethoven.  According to Wikipedia,

The sonata was originally dedicated to the violinist George Bridgetower (1778–1860), who performed it with Beethoven at the premiere on 24 May 1803 at the Augarten Theatre at a concert that started at the unusually early hour of 8:00 am. Bridgetower sight-read the sonata; he had never seen the work before, and there had been no time for any rehearsal. However, research indicates that after the performance, while the two were drinking, Bridgetower insulted the morals of a woman whom Beethoven cherished. Enraged, Beethoven removed the dedication of the piece, dedicating it instead to Rodolphe Kreutzer, who was considered the finest violinist of the day.^[1] However, Kreutzer never performed it, considering it "outrageously unintelligible". He did not particularly care for any of Beethoven's music, and they only ever met once, briefly.^[2]

Could this be true?  Anyway, the story is too good to check, and I'm only a humble blogger so no-one cares much what I say.

To get back to Tolstoy, his story is the account of a man finding his wife, a pianist, conversing intimately with her accompanist and friend, a violinist. The two have been practicing the Kreutzer Sonata.  It requires a lot of practice because it is a quite difficult piece of music.   He then kills his wife out of jealousy, but the violinist gets away.   I have not read the story, because I no longer am attempting to improve my mind through literature and would rather curl up with Daniel Silva's latest.  If my mind accidentally gets improved, okay, but I'm no longer working on it.

I was interested enough in the story  to go to YouTube and play a couple of versions of the Beethoven original.  It is quite beautiful but appears to be very demanding technically; however, to me all violin music seems demanding because I could no more play the violin than I could invent electricity. 

This Tolstoy story has apparently been made into a play, then adapted into a play for the Yiddish theater, then made into a movie of the Yiddish theater version, and for all I know is being made into a Pixar or Claymation version as we speak. 

The moral of the story might be, "Don't try to play music which is too technically difficult or emotionally arousing,"  Or maybe not.