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RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR March The ferocity with which the Moonlight’s last two chords are delivered suggests that the composer’s travails are not yet over Richard Osborne finds Murray Perahia on formidable form in two pinnacles in Beethoven’s output, with interpretations that stand among the finest available Beethoven Piano Sonatas – No 14, ‘Moonlight’, Op 27 No 2; No 29, ‘Hammerklavier’, Op 106 Murray Perahia pf DG F 479 8353 (56’ • DDD) The first thing we should do in approaching this musically remarkable and, in terms of its exploration of the composer’s tempest-tossed inner life, extraordinarily fascinating addition to the Beethoven discography is banish all thoughts of moonlight. A further assumption it might be useful to set aside, as we attend to what Murray Perahia calls ‘two of the most radically groundbreaking of the composer’s 32 piano sonatas’, is that the Hammerklavier is the more difficult of the two pieces. I’m not thinking here of the finger-wrenching challenge of actually delivering the Hammerklavier, something the unbridled fury of the finale of the earlier sonata interestingly presages. Rather, I’m thinking of the imaginative and technical challenges that the emotionally complex Sonata quasi una fantasia in the then alien key of C sharp minor presents to the player: first in seeking out its essence, then in distilling that essence on whatever keyboard circumstance or time provides. (As Charles Rosen observed, the sonata’s finale shredded the pianos of 8 GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2018 1801 as surely as its opening movement troubles more modern ones.) One of the many problems presented by the meditative opening movement is that there is no readymade solution to the question of the speed at which the music should move, other than that which the accomplished interpreter discovers for himself, be it Ignaz Friedman in one of the earliest of all recordings (Columbia, 2/27) or Murray Perahia today. Thus Solomon, in a famous HMV recording (10/54), takes nearly nine minutes over the movement, whereas Perahia, in his luminously voiced yet at the same time emotionally riven performance, takes a little over five. And make no mistake, this is desolate music. ‘A pale light glimmers above the whispered pianissimo triplets, from whose dark depths the grief-laden melody ascends’, wrote Wilhelm Kempff, whose 1956 mono recording (DG, 10/57) is not dissimilar to Perahia’s, for all that Kempff occasionally allows, for expressive effect, a barely perceptible pause in those whispered triplets. We re-encounter this mastery of musical discourse, albeit at greater length and on a higher plane, in Perahia’s free-flowing yet lofty account of the great soliloquy that stands at the heart of the Hammerklavier. PHO T O G R A P H Y D G / B R O E D E I X F E L : Click on a CD cover to buy/stream from gramophone.co.uk
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March Editor’s Choices RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR ‘THE GERSHWIN MOMENT’ Kirill Gerstein pf St Louis Symphony Orchestra / David   Robertson Myrios Kirill Gerstein’s famed virtuosity meets his jazz background to produce a thrilling, hugely enjoyable and well thought-out celebration of Gershwin’s music. > LISTEN TO OUR KIRILL GERSTEIN PODCAST JS BACH Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV1014-1019 Isabelle Faust vn Kristian Bezuidenhout hpd Harmonia Mundi Isabelle Faust and Kristian Bezuidenhout’s experience in performing these works together pays dividends once in front of   the mics on this wonderful set. FRANCK. POULENC Cello Sonatas Edgar Moreau vc David   Kadouch pf Erato Well-known favourites and less familiar works are given equally excellent advocacy by the ever-impressive young French cellist Edgar Moreau and pianist David Kadouch. FRANCK String Quartet. Piano Quintet Paavali Jumppanen pf Danel Quartet CPO Critic Andrew Farach Colton’s praise for this Franck chamber set, and for Quatuor Danel’s gripping interpretations, couldn’t be stronger: ‘urgently recommended’, he concludes. BERSA ‘Complete Piano Music, Vol   1’ Goran Filipec pf Grand Piano New music to me, but what a delight to discover! This is the opening volume of a series devoted to the Croatian composer Blagoje Bersa’s, and one couldn’t ask for a better champion than Goran Filipec. DEBUSSY ‘Songs, Vol 4’ Lucy Crowe sop Malcolm   Martineau pf Hyperion Debussy features heavily in this issue, and if you’re inspired to explore his music further then this, the latest volume in Hyperion’s series of his songs, is an exquisite place to turn. MARTINŮ Madrigals Martinů Voices / Lukáš   Vasilek Supraphon Extraordinary, skilful and atmospheric music, both sacred and secular, from Martin≤   – words which equally apply to the musicmaking itself from the ensemble named in his honour. SCHNITTKE Psalms of Repentance Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir / Kaspars   Putniņš BIS Possibly the best recording yet of one of the choral repertoire’s most technically challenging works, says critic Ivan Moody of this powerful Schnittke recording. HANDEL Arias Franco Fagioli counterten Il   Pomo d’Oro / Zefira   Valova vn DG From theatrical fireworks to slower arias, countertenor Franco Fagioli brings drama and superb singing to this Handel showcase; Il   Pomo d’Oro offer excellent accompaniment. Kempff was one of the few pianists of his generation who avoided ponderousness in the Moonlight’s middle movement. Perahia, too, catches well the dance’s melancholy grace and epigrammatic charm;   and though his account of the Trio is properly robust, the almost hallucinatory quality Beethoven brings to the drone bass in the Trio’s concluding bars is not lost on Perahia. Thus, when the dance returns, it too appears to have taken on something of the mood of barely suppressed pain that is the sonata’s abiding characteristic. It’s been said that the work’s undeniably angry finale tries too hard, is too repetitive. There’s no sense of that in Perahia’s reading, which has exactly the right degree of implacability, for all that he’s happy to play Beethoven’s game of false dawns with a gracious approach to the recapitulation and a decorous descent from the coda’s emblazoning high trill to the pit below. The ferocity with which the two last chords are delivered suggests, however, that the composer’s travails are not yet over. A late chapter in this same story arrived with the composition of the Hammerklavier in 1818, by which time Beethoven had become, in JWN   Sullivan’s words, ‘the great solitary’, ‘a man of infinite courage, infinite suffering’. Much ink has been spilled on how rapidly the first movement should travel. ‘Uncommonly quick and fiery’ was Czerny’s judgement, an approach that echoes the spirit, if not the letter, of Beethoven’s hair-raising metronome mark.   Artur Schnabel attempted that in his   legendary HMV recording (11/36) made in exile in London in 1935, by which time the once ‘flawless’ playing (Claudio Arrau’s testimony) was no   longer entirely flawless. For all his own   tribulations in recent years, Perahia’s playing pretty well is. His approach to the first movement is never reckless yet it’s essentially ‘quick and   fiery’, the fearless ambassador to a still   untamed   spirit. Perahia is artist enough to know that great art is never, of itself, ugly. It may be   Beethoven’s instinct to push every component of the dauntingly complex contrapuntal finale to its logical conclusion (and beyond) but Perahia, though honouring the intent, declines to turn the   music into a rout. In matters of musical   diction, lucidity   matters. Not long before the sonata’s end, Beethoven introduces a three-part fugato, a   lyric inspiration of rare beauty, limpid in   D. In the context of this carefully gauged programme, we might be tempted to recall   the similarly precarious beauties of   the   C   sharp minor Sonata’s opening movement   – except that, for some inexplicable reason, the producers have placed   the sonata after the Hammerklavier. That lapse notwithstanding, this is a disc, naturally and vividly recorded, of   rare distinction and pedigree. gramophone.co.uk Click on a CD cover to buy/stream from GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2018 9

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RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR

March

The ferocity with which the Moonlight’s last two chords are delivered suggests that the composer’s travails are not yet over

Richard Osborne finds Murray Perahia on formidable form in two pinnacles in Beethoven’s output, with interpretations that stand among the finest available

Beethoven Piano Sonatas – No 14, ‘Moonlight’, Op 27 No 2; No 29, ‘Hammerklavier’, Op 106 Murray Perahia pf DG F 479 8353 (56’ • DDD) The first thing we should do in approaching this musically remarkable and, in terms of its exploration of the composer’s tempest-tossed inner life, extraordinarily fascinating addition to the Beethoven discography is banish all thoughts of moonlight.

A further assumption it might be useful to set aside, as we attend to what Murray Perahia calls ‘two of the most radically groundbreaking of the composer’s 32 piano sonatas’, is that the Hammerklavier is the more difficult of the two pieces. I’m not thinking here of the finger-wrenching challenge of actually delivering the Hammerklavier, something the unbridled fury of the finale of the earlier sonata interestingly presages. Rather, I’m thinking of the imaginative and technical challenges that the emotionally complex Sonata quasi una fantasia in the then alien key of C sharp minor presents to the player: first in seeking out its essence, then in distilling that essence on whatever keyboard circumstance or time provides. (As Charles Rosen observed, the sonata’s finale shredded the pianos of

8 GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2018

1801 as surely as its opening movement troubles more modern ones.)

One of the many problems presented by the meditative opening movement is that there is no readymade solution to the question of the speed at which the music should move, other than that which the accomplished interpreter discovers for himself, be it Ignaz Friedman in one of the earliest of all recordings (Columbia, 2/27) or Murray Perahia today. Thus Solomon, in a famous HMV recording (10/54), takes nearly nine minutes over the movement, whereas Perahia, in his luminously voiced yet at the same time emotionally riven performance, takes a little over five.

And make no mistake, this is desolate music. ‘A pale light glimmers above the whispered pianissimo triplets, from whose dark depths the grief-laden melody ascends’, wrote Wilhelm Kempff, whose 1956 mono recording (DG, 10/57) is not dissimilar to Perahia’s, for all that Kempff occasionally allows, for expressive effect, a barely perceptible pause in those whispered triplets. We re-encounter this mastery of musical discourse, albeit at greater length and on a higher plane, in Perahia’s free-flowing yet lofty account of the great soliloquy that stands at the heart of the Hammerklavier. PHO T O G R A P H Y

D G

/

B R O E D E

I X

F E L

:

Click on a CD cover to buy/stream from gramophone.co.uk

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