Latest / The Piano Maven with Jed Distler / Beethoven's 32 Sonatas with 64 pianists: Op. 22

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Beethoven's 32 Sonatas with 64 pianists: Op. 22 · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Dissler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings.
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  And we are well underway with our mini series devoted to Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas.
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  This is a way that I wanted to launch our second season that started on January 1st,
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  2025.
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  Please consider committing to a paid subscription to this podcast on my Piano Maven sub stack
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  page by visiting the link provided in the episode description.
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  group Zoom meetings about everything in the piano world.
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  I've got a lot of goodies planned for you and for us.
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  So while you can access the Piano Maven on just about any major podcast platform, I'm
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  directing your comments and suggestions toward my sub stack page because I think that's going
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  to be the most manageable and time sensitive way that I can respond to your many comments.
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  If you send comments through the YouTube channel, I will certainly get back to you, but sometimes
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  I don't see a comment on YouTube until way after you've posted it.
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  So I don't want you to think that I am ignoring you because the whole point of this podcast
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  is for us to have a dialogue about these recordings.
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  And I want to know what you think as well.
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  So we are going through the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven in numerical order where I am
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  recommending recordings for each sonata, two recordings for each sonata.
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  One is a historic or archival recording and the other is a modern recording.
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  And the trick is not to repeat any pianist from start to finish in this process.
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  So that means that for 32 sonatas, we recommend 64 recordings in total by 64 different pianists.
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  And without repeating a pianist, that might seem like a big challenge, but it really hasn't
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  been that difficult because so many pianists have recorded Beethoven sonatas on a very
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  high and world class level.
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  And excellence really does abound on disk.
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  You really just have to look for it and to look in unexpected places, as you soon will
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  learn on this podcast.
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  I often talk about my late friend and colleague, the pianist and writer Harris Goldsmith, who
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  for me was the best classical record reviewer ever when it came to piano music.
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  And he was my role model in every way, so no Harris Goldsmith, no Jed Disler.
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  So when you read my reviews, and if you like my reviews, or even if you don't like my reviews,
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  that's perfectly fine too.
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  But if you like how I basically write about piano recordings, that's the Harris Goldsmith
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  influence.
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  Also, the late Mortimer Frank, who wrote for Fanfare, was a big influence on me in
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  terms of his writing style.
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  Anyway, Harris often likened the dramatic use of rests or silences and the thematic
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  profile throughout Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 11, Op. 22 in B-flat, as being pure Rossini.
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  And there is a kind of opera buffa sensibility to the writing in the sonata.
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  He probably could set the entire first movement to a comic libretto, and it would be a plausible
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  ensemble number from one of the early Rossini operas, maybe.
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  Or else the minuet could be a ballroom scene where the young lovers are singing a duet.
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  Maybe.
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  I don't know.
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  I'm not going to get started writing a libretto to Beethoven's Op. 22, although it really
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  could be an opera.
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  For my historic choice of a recording of the sonata, I've decided to recommend one of Harris
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  Goldsmith's favorites.
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  In fact, this recording he had personally singled out to me as being special, and he
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  was absolutely right to say so.
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  So my recommendation, or rather Harris Goldsmith's recommendation for an historic Beethoven Op.
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  22, is the 1951 mono LP recording by Wilhelm Kempf, and one easily could recommend Kempf
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  in so many sonatas, really.
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  After all, he did record the complete cycle twice, and he made many multiple versions
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  on 78s.
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  But in any case, Kempf approaches Op. 22 with the most supple phrasing, and a light and
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  flexible touch, and humorous timing, and the way he uses tone color to convey character,
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  also the sense he conveys of where the lines are moving and how he follows these lines
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  through to their logical stopping points.
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  The hushed quality that Kempf brings to the first movement's development section really
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  seems to bypass the piano itself into a realm of pure music.
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  When you're listening to this recording, you don't think at all that the piano has hammers.
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  You think that the piano may have lungs instead.
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  Another wonderful recording that is similar to Kempf in some ways, but has a little more
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  metal and steel on the surface, and more tooth to its bite, features the late Maurizio Polini,
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  and he is my modern recommendation.
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  Now he recorded this sonata twice, once live in 1988, and then many years later in the
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  studio.
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  And I've been on the fence about which version to recommend.
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  For instance, the later studio version is altogether leaner and more compact than in
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  the live recording.
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  His studio first movement is a little faster, but the unison scales are more secure and
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  squarely precise in the earlier live version.
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  The earlier live adagio sings out a bit more.
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  The ends of phrases are sometimes tapered in a vocal manner, which Polini does not do
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  in his studio remake, which is a little more terse by comparison.
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  In the minuet, the studio version has a stronger and more prominent left-hand presence, but
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  I prefer the earlier live version's more pliable shaping of the right-hand melodies.
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  So I guess it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.
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  But I think I'm going to give the nod to the earlier live 1988 recording, because it's
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  a little more expressive and flexible on the whole.
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  Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have both Polini recordings in my collection, but if
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  I had to pick just one, it would be Polini live in 1988 for the Sonata No. 11.
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  So for our next episode, we're going to talk about the Sonata No. 12, the Funeral March
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  Sonata, and I think you may be surprised by my choices for that sonata, or maybe not,
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  who knows.
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  This is Jed Dissler, and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
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  guide to piano recordings, and take good care until the next time.