Beethoven: Piano Sonatas & Bagatelles

 

I won't speak much to Beethoven's piano sonatas individually, however you can find my thoughts on each volume of Warner's 9CD set on our Beethoven composer page. If you have ever followed the composer's nine symphonies, five piano concertos, or his sixteen string quartets, the progression of a composer is the highlight of listening to all 32 piano sonatas.

Suffice to say, he made the piano sonata genre his own, starting off with four-movement, symphonic-sized works of lionized assurance and came out the other end with two-movement pieces of inner contemplation and chromatic complexity.

As to pianist Stephen Kovacevich née Bishop, the most obvious attribute for me is his forward-moving tempos. There were a couple of times I thought he was taking the music just at the point of breaking his technique, but kudos to him for keeping it together.

Kovacevich also has a solid sound at the piano. While I initially thought he was playing into an exponent of contrasts, exaggerating Beethoven's many sudden outbursts apart from cantabile, lyrical lines, I think the pianist generally has a firm touch on the piano. This doesn't mean he can't play feathery-light or with tempered grace, for the final handful of piano sonatas show he absolutely can, but I think his technique prefers a solid touch to the keyboard. It could also be this piano or its keyboard action.

While Kovacevich does apply rubato, it is always tasteful. Across 9CDs, I maybe came away once feeling he was drawing attention to a choice he made to pull back in a stilted manner. The great majority of the time, the pianist takes Beethoven's repeats. I think there were only two moments in the earlier sonatas where he unexpectedly didn't observe a repeat.

With all that was said above, some might find Kovacevich a little too quick to push forward urgently. If you are looking for the poetry of Kempff, you won't find it here. Yet, he is not robotically Baroque as I generally find Brendel either. Listening to these extremes on record is a wonderful way to experience Beethoven from all sort of interpreters.

There are simply too many fine pianists who have recorded Beethoven's piano sonatas to declare a favorite. Rather, there is an array, nay, a palette of options which can speak to the listener through the composer's music. Kovacevich lies more on the impetuous side, preferring a flowing motion and extremes of impact in Beethoven's music.

I do like that Kovacevich set down the 32 piano sonatas and 17 Bagatelles across a decade rather than taking a couple of weekends to bang through them and get them out to the press. Furthermore, while Kovacevich might have an affinity for Beethoven, he doesn't already have five or six cycles in the bag as other pianist have chose over the years. He did, on the other hand, record some Beethoven piano sonatas for Philips previous to this complete sonata cycle on EMI / Warner.

With that in mind, I find the EMI / Warner sonics perfectly fine. Perhaps the piano is captured closely, but the instrument never felt clattery or banging to my ears, and thankfully never sounded distant or hollow. These were all studio affairs as well, so the acoustic is never an issue.

 

 

Works
Piano Sonata 1 - 3 (61.36)
Piano Sonata 4 - 7 (75.04)
Piano Sonata 8 - 11 (70.07)
Piano Sonata 12 - 15 (70.37)
Piano Sonata 16 - 20 (78.06)
Piano Sonata 21 - 25 (78.10)
Piano Sonata 26 - 28 & 30 (67.39)
Piano Sonata 29 & 31 (60.39)

Piano Sonata 32 & Bagatelles (57.08)

Soloists
Stephen Kovacevich, piano

Label: EMI / Warner
Year: 1992 - 2003; 2017 (set)
Total Timing: 10.19.06

In the end, I enjoy Kovacevich's captivating cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas.

If you don't mind some impetuousness in terms of tempo and technique, this should please greatly.

 

 

Find more Beethoven recordings HERE!