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DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON the highest expectations of this handsomely produced box. It is the measure of a great performance that when it is in progress, no other vision of the work seems possible or valid, so complete is the picture the artist offers. In terms of sheer tonal beauty and classical poise, it would be difficult to surpass Pollini in the A major Sonata, Op 101. No subtlety of phrasing or dynamic nuance goes unnoticed and he gives a finely proportioned and beautifully shaped reading of the first movement, more tautly held together than, say, Brendel, who sees this movement in a different light (Philips) yet flexible and imaginative in every way. The finale is superbly fashioned and has an imposing sense of energy and power without in any way being overdriven. Rhythmic articulation and the sense of momentum are beyond praise and the variety of keyboard colour is no less impressive. Such is its strength that when listening to this performance one can imagine no other way of playing the work. Yet, of course, Pollini does not offer the whole picture for no one performance can encompass that. Turning to Gilels (DG)is to be reminded of this, for here one feels in the presence of greater wisdom, a wisdom moreover, that is effortlessly and more naturally arrived at. There is the same sense of mystery and repose here that I recall from the famous Schnabel performance on HMV 78s. If Schnabel’s Hammerklavier was not one of the triumphs of his pioneering cycle, its surface roughness worked in its favour in that the listener was never distracted from the spirit by the beauty of the letter. Pollini’s account is simply staggering, for if there are incidental details which are more tellingly illuminated by other masters such as Brendel or Ashkenazy, no performance is more perfect than this new version. Superb rhythmic grip, alert articulation, sensitivity to line and gradation of tone, a masterly control of the long paragraph; all these are features of this remarkable reading; In the slow movement the sublime outpouring of lyrical feeling beginning at bar 27 shows Pollini’s peerless sense of line and eloquence of spirit, though memories of Arrau who fashions this passage with great poetry are not banished. John Ogdon’s deleted and much underrated RCA account had a splendidly withdrawn feeling at this point and a raptness and tranquillity that I greatly admired. No one, however, quite matches Pollini’s stunning finale: its strength and controlled power silence criticism. There is no doubt, I think, that this is great piano playing. The Sonatas, Opp 109 and 110 have appeared before, when Joan Chissell found herself ‘much moved by their noble purity and truth as well as bowled over by the quality of the pianism’. True, she wondered whether some collectors might not find them ‘too objective’, and I must confess that since writing about them in the August 1976 ‘Quarterly Retrospect’ I have been unable to dispel the impression of spiritual remoteness that persisted. What I wrote of both performances applies also to this new Op 111. In other words there is no trace of waywardness or self-indulgence and every evidence of the supreme keyboard mastery and classical poise for which Pollini is rightly renowned. Every phrase is moulded ‘with marmoreal perfection, every detail of articulation and dynamic nuance is perfectly placed, and in terms of both pianism and intellectual grip’ this Op 111 is as formidable, thought-provoking and satisfying as they are. Having said this, it may seem curmudgeonly (even impertinent) to question the undoubted achievement of this performance. Yet there is always more to Beethoven than meets the ear, and returning to this reading, flawless though it is in every respect, some depths remain covered. Perhaps the tempo of the Arietta works against Pollini, though his approach does not differ markedly from Brendel (Philips), and in any event I don’t feel that the slightly broader tempos that mark Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich’s reading, or for that matter Schnabel’s of 1942 (RCA) is the only factor in making them more searching. They convey a richer quality of humanity and experience. (I am not, of course, saying that Pollini’s account is wanting in humanity, or spirituality, but that these qualities are more abundantly in evidence with Schnabel or Bishop.) In discussing Opp 109 and 110, JOC kept returning to the word ‘purity’. ‘That’s the inescapable word’, she wrote. And no one listening to these masterly performances will take issue with her. Classical discipline, purity of tone and style, total and complete keyboard mastery, all these are present in these marvellous performances. Yet in discussing Schnabel the word ‘perfection’ would never spring to mind whereas it so often crossed my mind after listening to these Pollini accounts. Yet it is Schnabel who undoubtedly brings us closer to the spirit of this music. It must be obvious from the above that this is an indispensable issue for all serious collectors. The quality of the recorded sound is exemplary, the instrument is clearly focused and reproduces with the utmost naturalness. A satisfying and thought-provoking set that no lover of great piano-playing should neglect. Robert Layton January 1978 Beethoven Piano Sonatas – No 14, ‘Moonlight’, Op 27 No 2; No 29, ‘Hammerklavier’, Op 106 Murray Perahia pf DG F 479 8353 (56’ • DDD) Recording of the Month (March 2018) 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 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 ready-made 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 6 GRAMOPHONE 6 GRAMOPHONE gramophone.co.uk
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A fearless ambassador to an untamed spirit: Murray Perahia plays Beethoven DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON D G / H A R A L D H O F F M A N N : P H O T O G R A P H Y 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. 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 hairraising 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. Richard Osborne March 2018 Beethoven Missa solemnis Charlotte Mar­giono sop Catherine Robbin mez William Kendall ten Alastair Miles bass Monteverdi Choir; English Baroque Soloists / John Eliot Gardiner Archiv Produktion F 429 779-2AH (72’ • DDD) gramophone.co.uk Gramophone Award 1991 (Recording of the Year & Choral) We know that the Missa solemnis has moments of the utmost and loveliest serenity, others when a spirit of confidence reigns, when grandeur is proclaimed with harmonic simplicity, and assurance affirmed with measured tread. Yet it’s the great whirls of sound, the divine scattering and striving, the straining of the soul to dance in freedom from all laws of time and formal conventions that ultimately characterize the work in our minds. Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a Heaven for? Exactly: Beethoven seems to be reaching beyond human grasp, and one of Heaven’s good works must surely be to give the Missa solemnis its ideal performance, liberated from all constraints of matter. Well, it now appears we do not need to wait that long. With his expert choir of 36 and his orchestra of 60 (with original instruments), Gardiner, like Terje Kvam on Nimbus before him, sheds some of the weight of numbers usually employed; he also has a team of soloists without weaknesses, and, it must be added, his own genius for making all things new. Comparison between the two recordings hardly needs to go beyond the first entry of the choir, where Gardiner’s singers bring meaning and urgency to their cries of Kyrie which with Kvam’s Oslo Cathedral Choir are scarcely more than formal statements. GRAMOPHONEGRAMOPHONE 7

A fearless ambassador to an untamed spirit: Murray Perahia plays Beethoven

DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON

D G

/

H A R A L D H O F F M A N N

:

P H O T O G R A P H Y

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.

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 hairraising 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. Richard Osborne March 2018

Beethoven Missa solemnis Charlotte Mar­giono sop Catherine Robbin mez William Kendall ten Alastair Miles bass Monteverdi Choir; English Baroque Soloists / John Eliot Gardiner Archiv Produktion F 429 779-2AH (72’ • DDD)

gramophone.co.uk

Gramophone Award 1991 (Recording of the Year & Choral)

We know that the Missa solemnis has moments of the utmost and loveliest serenity, others when a spirit of confidence reigns, when grandeur is proclaimed with harmonic simplicity, and assurance affirmed with measured tread. Yet it’s the great whirls of sound, the divine scattering and striving, the straining of the soul to dance in freedom from all laws of time and formal conventions that ultimately characterize the work in our minds. Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a Heaven for? Exactly: Beethoven seems to be reaching beyond human grasp, and one of Heaven’s good works must surely be to give the Missa solemnis its ideal performance, liberated from all constraints of matter. Well, it now appears we do not need to wait that long. With his expert choir of 36 and his orchestra of 60 (with original instruments), Gardiner, like Terje Kvam on Nimbus before him, sheds some of the weight of numbers usually employed; he also has a team of soloists without weaknesses, and, it must be added, his own genius for making all things new. Comparison between the two recordings hardly needs to go beyond the first entry of the choir, where Gardiner’s singers bring meaning and urgency to their cries of Kyrie which with Kvam’s Oslo Cathedral Choir are scarcely more than formal statements.

GRAMOPHONEGRAMOPHONE 7

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