COMPOSERS: Beethoven
LABELS: BIS
ALBUM TITLE: Beethoven
WORKS: Piano Sonatas Opp. 7 & 10/1, 2, 3
PERFORMER: Ronald Brautigam (fortepiano)
CATALOGUE NO: SACD-1472
Ronald Brautigam’s warm-toned
piano – a copy of an instrument
by Anton Walter of c1802 – serves
him particularly well in the lyrical
concluding rondo of the Sonata
Op. 7, with the figuration of its
stormy central episode returning in a
mollified form to bring the work to a
hauntingly beautiful close. This was
the first sonata Beethoven published
as a stand-alone work, and it’s one
of the most ambitious of his earlier
works of the kind. Brautigam brings
out all the urgency of its opening
Benchmark Bridge
calum macdonald applauds Bebbington’s virtuosic recital
Allegro, with its throbbing timpani
taps. His account of the deeply-felt
slow movement, though, is not an
unqualified success. It’s a piece
whose ‘sighing’ phrases are separated
by long pauses that need themselves
to carry a wealth of expression, and
the heavy accents Brautigam allows
himself in the opening bars disturb
the music’s essential serenity.
Brautigam gives generally fine
performances of the three Op. 10
sonatas, imparting a welcome sense
of spontaneity. The slow movement
of the last sonata in the group is one
of Beethoven’s great tragic utterances,
and one of only two pieces to which
he gave the heading of ‘mesto’ (sad).
Brautigam doesn’t perhaps quite
plumb all its depths, but on its own
terms his is an affecting account. For
a more overtly expressive performance
without any trace of self-conscious
soul-searching, Richard Goode
(playing a modern piano) strikes me
as ideal. In all these works Goode’s
recordings, made in the early 1990s,
still stand up very well; but if you’ve
been following Brautigam’s cycle you
won’t be disappointed by this latest
instalment. Misha Donat