CD
4264 • Beethoven - The 32 Piano Sonatas, Volume 4,
(2cds) - Op.101, Op.106, Op.109, Op.110,
Op.111, Schubert Piano Sonata in B flat major, Op.posth., D.960 David Allen Wehr, piano
Click for MP3 excerpts from:
Beethoven Piano Sonata in E major, Op.109,
(3rd Movement)
Beethoven Piano Sonata in A-flat major,
Op.110, (1st Movement)
Beethoven Piano Sonata in C-minor, Op.111,
(1st Movement)
"Recording of the Month--March, 2008"
"Towering, magnificent, definitive Beethoven"
Beethoven: 32 Piano Sonatas, vol. 4 Rating five
David Allen Wehr, piano (Connoisseur Society, 2 CDs)
The first thing you're likely to notice about this set is the
extreme clarity and detail of the recorded sound. Connoisseur
Society has been at the leading edge of piano recording for
decades and each year it sounds further evolved.
But it won't be long before you forget the audio quality as
you hear pianist Wehr performing Beethoven's late sonatas to
virtual perfection. This is playing of the highest order. Not
since Pollini's 1977 recordings have the sonatas in this volume,
Beethoven's last five, been rendered with such a combination of
meticulous fidelity to the written music and emotional
profundity.
Wehr has now recorded all of the Beethoven piano sonatas. If
you enjoy Volume 4 you may well decide to acquire the other
three. As a bonus, this volume includes an equally impressive
account of Schubert's Sonata in B-flat. Highly recommended.
Connoisseur Society CDs are not readily available in Canadian
music stores, but you can order them at http://www.connoisseursociety.com
.
Richard Todd
Review from MusicWeb International, March 2008.
These Sonatas are arguably Beethoven’s
greatest works and among the finest and most influential
piano compositions ever produced. As when listening to
Parsifal, one hears throughout the
Hammerklavier little bits here and there that made
it into many if not most of the ambitious piano
compositions written since. I have on occasion ridiculed
the banality and facility of some of Beethoven’s early
and middle period attempts at theme-and-variations, but
in these last works, produced in his final decade of
life he attained supreme, sublime, completely individual
mastery of the form. Perhaps even more remarkable is
that after a lifetime spent performing Bach’s Well
Tempered Clavier, Beethoven attained a unique
mastery of the fugue form also, and wrote a group of
totally individual masterpieces completely unlike any of
the models provided by his teacher.
The spirit of pianist Artur Schnabel hangs over these
recordings. He made the first recordings of the complete
Beethoven sonatas on 78s in the ’thirties, and for many
decades thereafter for most people any discussion of
Beethoven sonata recordings began and ended with mention
of his name. Schnabel had an astonishing ability to
project his very considerable musical intelligence and
showmanship by means of a piano keyboard. The recordings
are still in print and easily available; many will say
that the first step in getting to know the Beethoven
Sonatas should be to acquire the Schnabel recordings. I
have heard them, I admire them, I enjoyed them, and I
think the previous statement to be perfectly reasonable.
That said, I don’t have the Schnabel recordings and
don’t listen to them.
The reason is that a concert grand piano is a living
breathing animal; I’ve been in a small room with a huge
concert grand piano with someone who really knows what
he’s doing sitting at the keyboard, and the effect is
almost frightening in its overwhelming power. Older
piano recordings are like listening through a closed
door; I want that door open. I’d rather listen to David
Allen Wehr live than listen to Schnabel through a closed
door. We mustn’t forget that pianists also listen to
Schnabel and learn from him. In 1930, nobody else could
do what Schnabel did; these days, that’s not true. I
suspect many modern artists would tell you they’ve taken
all they want from Schnabel and then added their own
vision to that.
Since the Hammerklavier recording has a drier
acoustic than the other recordings — all the better to
clarify the textures in the fugue — I assume that it was
recorded in Utica in 2004. The remaining sonatas have a
more live acoustic, and I assume that they were the ones
recorded during the previous sessions in Tarrytown. One
of the results of this is that Wehr’s recordings of the
final sonatas are often softer in texture than some
others. One hears stories of Beethoven destroying pianos
by pounding on them and some pianists assume the
obligation to try to do the same thing to a Steinway or
a Yamaha, but they forget a few things. A modern piano
treated kindly can make a lot, lot more noise than an
1824 Graf piano, so it isn’t necessary to try to push it
beyond the max. Also getting the maximum sound out of a
good piano is not done with strength but with cunning.
Even very sudden and loud Beethoven notes have harmonic
content, and one should make sure that no matter how
powerful the attack, all the notes should be audible. As
Badura-Skoda’s recording shows, Beethoven’s actual piano
was sweeter and more harp-like than most modern pianos,
varied tonally more from register to register. As David
Allen Wehr shows, it is possible to be powerfully
dramatic and still make every sound as beautiful as
possible, and the slightly richer acoustic of these
recordings helps him do this.
It is a testimony to its quality that all the university
and public libraries in my area have the Edith Vogel
performance of the Hammerklavier in their
collections, even as they may have others as well. She
plays the first two movements with high energy and gives
us a stunningly effective performance of the slow
movement as an extended (nearly 24 minutes long!)
dirge.* She puts up a terrific fight during the fugue
but, in the end, it wins, if just barely. David Allen
Wehr plays the adagio sostenuto with more
richness and variety, ranging at times into the
territory of Chopin(!) but it is during his performance
of the fugue that we reach the pinnacle of this whole
set. Wehr’s performance is absolutely astounding, enough
to make Glenn Gould turn green with envy. Every note is
in place, every line perfectly clear, the overall logic
and sweep of the music perfectly delineated. I had never
heard any Beethoven fugue so masterfully presented;
after hearing this performance, I listened to every
recording I have of the string quartet Grosse Fuge
Op. 133, and found that, even though I’ve been
listening to that work for fifty years, I enjoyed and
understood it as never before, and could clearly hear
who else grasps it and who does not. David Allen Wehr
has taught me something valuable and important about
Beethoven.
It is also important to comment on the quality of the
recording which has made all this amazing musicianship
audible. As I said, I want an open door between me and
the piano. These CDs are all but indistinguishable in
clarity and power from SACD piano recordings in my
collection. Many pianists would not dare allow
themselves to be recorded so clearly; their technique
wouldn’t stand up to this level of examination. David
Allen Wehr’s pianism shines through this clarity. You
can listen as close as you want for defects and you
won’t hear any, you’ll hear only Beethoven — perfect
Beethoven.
The last three sonatas, Opp. 109-111, written over a
period of three years from 1820 to 1822, are often
considered as a unit and programmed together as though
they formed a single gigantic hour long sonata in nine
movements**. Wehr’s release is unique in that they are
not put on the disks in sequence. No only are they on
different disks but Sonata No. 28 is put between them.
So, whatever Mr. Wehr thinks, the record producer
clearly sees them as separate, distinct works, and so do
I.
Wehr makes the opening vivace of Op. 109 into an
enormous crescendo; the prestissimo is brisk, but
Wehr does not sound rushed. The variations are
another performance high point in this set,
astonishingly beautiful and attain a Chopin-like grace,
a notable achievement for Beethoven, late or early. Wehr
plays with every bit as much control and flair as Glenn
Gould, but with less attitude and more affection. Op.
110 gives us three strongly individual sonata-form
movements. The whimsical rhythmic accents of the
question-and-answer allegro molto have never been
so convincingly presented. A very spooky adagio ma
non troppo is followed by what is probably
Beethoven’s very best fugue. The firm bass entry in this
fugue is probably the loudest sound on this entire set,
but is still beautiful; the exquisite crystallinity of
the inverted entry makes a strong contrast. Even Bach
would be impressed. The opening maestoso of Op.
111 could be a sketch for a symphonic first movement.
Wehr gives the opening chords a Haydnesque stature, and
the ensuing allegro reminds us of the Baroque
ouverture form. But the canonic exposition never
becomes a fugue as Beethoven struggles to go somewhere
with it and finally gives up, content to produce a fine
open-ended opening sonata movement. With the first notes
of the ensuing adagio molto semplice e cantabile
the matter is made clear. Triumphantly to finish off the
ideas in the first movement would require youth, and in
this, his final piano composition, a set of variations
in search of a theme, Beethoven revels in the content
perspective of old age, looking back a long, long time
to the simpler more direct work of his earlier
compositions. Is this sonata, at two movements,
unfinished? No, at 24 minutes it’s longer than either of
the previous two, and with such a strong sense of
beginning and completion nothing more needs to be said.
Sonata No. 28 does not belong to the “late” sonatas,
being jocular, theatrical, almost humorous in tone at
times, with brief reflective slow movements. Beethoven,
like Liszt, wrote some of his most profound music in
march tempo. Wehr’s brilliant projection of the complex
rhythms of this very serious alla marcia movement
keeps the tone light and full of surprises. But this
work is too deeply felt to be a “middle period” sonata,
either, and must stand as the glue that binds middle to
late. Here again we have wonderful realism, power and
transparency in the bass register.
Another spirit hovers over recordings of the Beethoven
sonatas from our generations: Daniel Barenboim. He began
recording the sonatas in New York for Westminster
records in the late 1950s and produced no less than four
complete sets, two for EMI and two for DG, the last one
in video. While these recordings are widely admired, he
has his detractors and has never won any critical or
popular sense of “owning” the works. His last set in
video, out of which I have only seen about an hour,
broadcast on US public television, has won universal
acclaim, in which I concur; I await an opportunity to
see and hear the whole set. The only complete Barenboim
recording I have access to is the DG from 1984, and
while I very much admire the performances of the middle
and early sonatas from this set, the late sonatas,
compared to David Allen Wehr, lack dramatic tension,
seem deliberate and relatively uncommitted.
Glenn Gould’s performances are rambling, eccentric, coy,
disrespectful, forgetting that it was Beethoven who
invented Schumann, not the other way around. In his
notes Gould describes these sonatas as “... a brief but
an idyllic stop-over in the itinerary of an intrepid
voyageur...” No, I don’t think so. Poor mono sound
is another liability, although the recordings are very
close and clear. CBS Masterworks’ engineers never did
figure out how to record Gould while keeping his
singing-along off the tape; they’d have been better off
not to try.
Although he was a coffin bearer at the old man’s funeral
and is buried near him, it is controversial as to
whether or not Schubert ever actually met Beethoven.
Just as well - they would have disliked each other. In
modern times Wilhelm Kempff and Artur Schnabel
established reputations with recordings of the works of
both men, but not equally well, so David Allen Wehr is
in good company if I say his Schubert does not quite
live up to his Beethoven. In his youth, Kempff was a
stellar middle period Beethoven interpreter, but in the
later works his reflective approach is not appropriate
for every movement. But to my taste Kempff is the
greatest Schubert interpreter I ever heard - he was
better live than on record - alone in his ability to
bring out the mystical depth, the yearning for
transcendence found in the piano works. Schubert passed
on to Chopin only a small bit of this feeling, and
Chopin’s ability to alternate it with a colorful
extroversion yielded his distinctive style and
prefigured Tchaikovsky. In Schubert’s symphonies
transfiguration was achieved and the yearning fulfilled,
but the piano works, even this most nearly triumphant,
are more intimate and tentative. Schnabel’s approach is,
as always, that of the showman; Nadelmann is more
successful than Schnabel at what Schnabel attempted -
and has the advantage of brilliant modern sound. Wehr
Beethovenizes the work a little, not so much as
Schnabel, and strikes a scholar’s median position
stylistically. His is a clean forthright performance,
and, for bringing all the disparate influences in the
work into optimum balance, may be your favorite version.
After repeated hearings, it may end up my favorite, too.
I haven’t heard the first volume in this set, the early
Beethoven sonatas, but I think I can say with confidence
that this set will rank among the very finest on disk.
Connoisseur Society started out many years ago like many
small labels, recording off-beat music with off-beat
artists, but with the release of this Beethoven set,
rounds off a catalogue which contains a superb Art of
the Fugue, an equally remarkable Well Tempered
Clavier, and a widely acclaimed set of the Mozart
Keyboard Sonatas (which I have not heard)
with Elizabeth Rich. Connoisseur Society can no longer
be considered a specialty label, and its sound standards
exceed all but the very pinnacle of major label
productions. E. Alan Silver has always been a name to
conjure with and the magic continues to produce wonders.
Paul Shoemaker
New CD produced by Connoisseur Society
This is a new recording in its original packaging. It is offered by a recording company that has many years experience in the classical and jazz music publishing industry.
For further information about this selection, please visit our on-line catalog at www.connoisseursociety.com
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