Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 8

Garrick Ohlsson's Beethoven sonata cycle, originally issued on the Arabesque label and here reappearing on Bridge, rolls into its eighth volume with this quite typical program of an early, a middle, and a late sonata. The set has not been entirely consistent, but it's never dull, and it has some real high points, one of which is to be found on the present release. Here, as elsewhere, Ohlsson refuses to read Romanticism back into the early Beethoven sonatas. When the Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 2/1, was composed in 1795, it was Haydn who ruled Europe's musical life and who influenced Beethoven most directly; Ohlsson's reading of this work is restrained and carefully controlled as to tempo and intensity. He lets the finale break loose a bit, as if Beethoven were forging his future language in fits and starts; the idea is sound, but the movement somehow doesn't seem to be of a piece with the others. The Sonata No. 30 in E minor, Op. 109, is a mixed bag. The opening movement combines rhythmic freedom and a careful delineation of the music's inner polyphony in a performance that makes the work sound like one of Beethoven's late quartets. But the middle movement never quite makes it to the indicated Prestissimo, and the deeply lyrical final variation set is a by-the-book affair that's a disappointment among the late sonata group, especially coming after Ohlsson's titanic reading of the Piano Sonata No. 29, "Hammerklavier." All objections are erased, however, with the Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, "Appassionata" -- not "Op. 57, No. 1," as is given in the track list. Ohlsson's reading of the famed opening movement is among the very best available in balancing intense drama with the tremendous level of detail in the music's mighty ebb and flow of inner struggle. It's the sort of performance that leaves the listener a bit exhausted, and Ohlsson is wise to let things relax a bit in the slow movement (a few beats per minute shy of Andante) and finale; he doesn't whale on the diminished chords that introduce the finale like so many other artists do, and he lets the work play out in a dark, somewhat grim mood. Sound is a negative on this disc, one of the first of Ohlsson's cycle to be recorded (it dates back to 1992); the microphones seem too close to the piano and result in a harsh, strangely ringing sound. But Ohlsson produced an "Appassionata" for the ages here.