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Beethoven: Sonatas Nos. 29 "Hammerklavier" & 3; Bagatelles Op. 126
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About Beethoven: Sonatas Nos. 29
Amazon.com Sviatoslav Richter was devoted to Beethoven and kept nearly two dozen of the composer's 32 sonatas in his active repertory. But some sonatas--such as No. 3 in C Major (Opus 2, No. 3), No. 7 in D Major (Opus 10, No. 3), and No. 32 in C Minor (Opus 111)--turned up on Richter programs decade after decade, while others appeared for a season or so never to return. Richter's relationship to Sonata No. 29 in B-flat ( Hammerklavier) belongs to the latter category. He performed it all over Europe in the spring and summer of 1975 and seems never to have programmed it again. One wonders why. Richter was designed by God to perform the Hammerklavier. He had the huge hands necessary for its reckless leaps, the strength and stamina for its marathon length, and the intellect necessary to make lucid its grinding dissonance and (in the finale) its pounding counterpoint. Perhaps Richter thought that at 60--his age when he began to program it--he was a little too old for the Hammerklavier. Certainly, even a Richter enthusiast can be forgiven for wishing the pianist had turned to the piece 10 years earlier. Still, the pianist's Hammerklavier is heroically grand and fiercely energetic. Of the three performances of the sonata that Richter gave in a two-week period (and that have been preserved on disc) in London, Prague, and Aldeburgh (this disc), this recording is probably best-suited to most listeners. While not as exciting as the risk-taking Prague performance, it is much better recorded and more accurate. It also contains several bonuses: beautifully played versions of Beethoven's Sonata No. 3 and of three bagatelles from the composer's Opus 126. --Stephen Wigler Review Anyone assembling a Richter collection would surely want some of his Beethoven. In many of the sonatas he excelled; odd that the concertos seem rarely to have interested him. This Aldeburgh Festival concert and broadcast from 1975 nicely complements the all-Beethoven two-disc set, mostly of studio recordings, in the Philips 'Great Pianists' series: there are no duplications, the great man is on form, and you could say he was born to play the Hammerklavier Sonata. I am not sure why the slow movement slightly disappointed me; after a first paragraph as grave and finely weighted as one could wish, I felt in the continuation Richter didn't always hold in balance the demands of tempo and mood and was perhaps inclined to admit daylight too readily into an interior world that, arguably, should always be lit from within. But had I been sitting in the nave of Blythburgh Church my impression might have been different. The acoustic there could also have been responsible for his first-movement tempo which over microphones at least errs on the side of the monumental rather than the breakneck and the dangerous. It's a good recording though, and a fine piano, doing justice to Richter's wonderfully differentiated range of sounds and dynamic levels. Other impressions are of his selfless concentration, understanding, boundless musical energy, and in the long finale, of his command of timing and of the glorious variety and sheer drama of the thing, which bring a sense at the very end that the space and reach of the Hammerklavier Sonata have been encompassed. When Richter took wing like this in a great work you felt there was no one to touch him.The grandest and most brilliant of the Op. 2 Sonatas, the C major, makes a good foil and also engages him completely, though not even he can disguise the fact that this is one of the most difficult in all Beethoven to begin cleanly. The rest has a vibrant intensity, warmth and joy that, again, appear to be qualities particular to the piece and to Beethoven, not imposed on him. Given Richter's views on exposition repeats, it's odd that he doesn't play the one in the first movement. The three Bagatelles are placed between the sonatas. The one in B minor is tigerish and very aggressive, as if a piece of proto-Prokofiev, which you may or may
