Performance for performance, this volume of all of
Beethoven's piano music except his sonatas and concertos may be the weakest of all the 20 volumes of Deutsche Grammophon's 1997
Beethoven edition. With the often eccentric intellectuality of
Anatol Ugorski, the occasionally oblivious virtuosity
Mikhail Pletnev, and the almost always superficial
Gianluca Cascioli, many of the performances are less than definitive. And while pianists like the noble
Wilhelm Kempff, the fiery
Emil Gilels, and the peculiar but powerful
Olli Mustonen do turn in fabulous performances, they are set next to the less-than-fabulous performances of
Ugorski,
Pletnev, and
Cascioli. But in the end, the quality of the performances matters less than the fact that the recordings of them exist. How many other recordings are there of all of
Beethoven's sets of piano variations, his early sonatas and his four-hand sonata, his waltzes and allegrettos and allemandes and rondos and bagatelles? And of those, how many are nearly as good as these performances? And how many sound nearly as good as these superb DG recordings? The answer, of course, is none, which makes this set essential for all its flaws.