Garrick Ohlsson's cycle of
Beethoven piano sonatas has been notable in its avoidance of the usual early-middle-late classification of these works. Instead, he tends to group sonatas together by type. Here, Vol. 7 includes two early sonatas and the late Piano Sonata in A flat major, Op. 110. These might be called sonatas in a mellow mood, but laced together with contrapuntal art. What links these sonatas together in
Ohlsson's mind is that a stretch of music may begin with a playful or pastoral tune that will then be elaborated into something strikingly complex. This has often been considered a hallmark of
Beethoven's late style, but
Ohlsson is finding traits of the late works in works from
Beethoven's entire lifetime. His treatments of the early sonatas seem outwardly plain. The second-movement scherzo of the Piano Sonata No. 13 in E flat major, Op. 27/1, for example, has received any number of readings much more violent than
Ohlsson's, inspired in many cases by the obvious proto-Romanticism of the work's companion "Moonlight" Sonata. But the program as a whole makes sense. The material at the beginning of that work and of Op. 110 has a family resemblance, and
Beethoven is seen to be working it out in a deeper way at the end of his life in an approach that is arguably preferable to layering a coat of secular mysticism on the late works. The performance of Op. 110 itself, as with all of the final sonatas so far, is superb, with everything pointing toward the final fugue. Sample that fugue, track 11, to hear
Ohlsson at his formidable technical best. His pace is deliberate, but the amount of detail he excavates from the depths of
Beethoven's polyphony is impressive. Hear the dense notes that spill out of the double-time passage at the end;
Ohlsson gives you material to chew on for many hearings here.
Ohlsson's
Beethoven has the value of revealing its ideas only gradually, and that in itself is very much worthy of notice.