British pianist
David Wilde, well into his eighth decade when this album was made in 2009, chose three
Beethoven sonatas that have been recorded hundreds or thousands of times. And he achieved versions that are technically superb and, for most of the album, sound hardly at all like other versions.
Wilde's readings are high-contrast affairs that favor ambitious arcs over lyricism. The highlight is the opening performance of the Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53 ("Waldstein"), where
Wilde makes almost none of the compromises common to high-speed versions of the outer movements (the octave glissandi in the finale are the exception, with the reasoning explained in his own booklet notes). There is a perhaps typically British matter-of-factness in
Wilde's rendering of the first movement's chordal second theme, but the sheer power of his playing gives it a range and sweep that are anything but matter-of-fact. The big outer movements, here and in the Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31/2 ("Tempest'), are counterbalanced by deliberate, highly lyrical but not sentimental slow movements, and the performances as a whole have an indefinable grandeur that sometimes gets lost in modern competencies. The late Piano Sonata No. 31 in A major, Op. 110, fails to make quite as strong an impression;
Wilde plays the sonata's dramatic strokes (such as the syncopated eruption in the second movement) straight and thus downplays the aspect of freedom in
Beethoven's late music. Even this sonata, however, is absorbing, and the entire album, with fine sound from the University of Edinburgh's Reid Concert Hall, is a compelling release representing a lifetime of study.