COMPOSERS: Beethoven
LABELS: Bridge (both)
ALBUM TITLE: Beethoven
WORKS: Piano Sonata No. 4 in E flat, Op. 7; Piano Sonata No. 24 in F sharp, Op. 78; Piano Sonata No. 28 in A, Op. 101
PERFORMER: Garrick Ohlsson (piano) - both
CATALOGUE NO: 9198 / 9201
We live in an age of great Beethoven
piano playing, even if not of great
orchestral interpretation. One series
of records or discs after another has
emerged of the highest quality, so
that we can gain extremely varied
perspectives on the same works,
quite a few of them equally valid.
Even so, I doubt whether I shall
ever be as impressed by any future
performances as I have been by the
ones on the first two of a planned
complete cycle by the American
Garrick Ohlsson.
His career is something of a
mystery: having won the Chopin
competition in Warsaw in 1970, and
established himself as a great Chopin
interpreter, he has never made nearly
as big a reputation in the UK as he
should have done, though I heard
wonderful concerts from him in the
1970s here. Now, with the superb
sound engineering of Bridge, we can
hear him in six of the 32 sonatas, the
most familiar ones so far avoided,
but all these as fresh and compelling
as I have ever heard them. Ohlsson
commands a huge variety of tones,
pays immense attention to detail,
but contrives to be spontaneous and
to keep each whole work always in
view. The last work on the second
disc is Op. 111, the last sonata of all,
and given here as great a reading as
I have ever heard – and as great as
Ohlsson’s teacher, Claudio Arrau,
gave it. I can’t give it any higher
praise than that. Yet in some ways I was even
more impressed by the sheer stature
he finds, without going in for
inflationary measures, in the ‘little’
Sonata in F sharp minor, Op. 78.
Lasting only ten minutes, the effect
it has is out of all proportion to that.