Chandos’s second collection of Beethoven Sonatas from Bavouzet contains the two Op. 27 Sonatas (the second of which is the Moonlight), the three Op. 31 Sonatas (the second of which is the Tempest), Sonatas Op. 28 (Pastoral), Op. 53 (Waldstein), and the unnamed Sonatas Op. 22, 26 and 49. Written between 1795 and 1805, they represent the composer’s middle period. The earlier works retain a classical elegance, but this disappears in the Op. 31 set. By the time of the Waldstein (and its rejected slow movement, recycled separately as the Andante Favori), the composer has decided to use the piano sonata as a platform for making some big statements. Unlike some pianists, Bavouzet recognises that a different approach, even a different touch, is required from one work to the next. The accents in Op. 22 for example are sharp and briskly classical, whereas the accents in the finale of the Moonlight Sonata and the first movement of the Tempest are fuller, more in keeping with sturm und drang. His pedaling in the first movement of the Moonlight (the trickiest aspect of that music) is perfectly judged, and he finds a tender quality in a slower than usual rendition of the Allegretto. Overall,…

The third volume of Paul and Huw Watkins’ survey of British cello music turns to sonatas written after 1945 by Edmund Rubbra, Alan Rawsthorne, and EJ Moeran. All three are works that haven’t entered mainstream repertoire, but this CD makes a compelling argument that they should. Rubbra’s Sonata in G Minor shows his preoccupation with counterpoint and the music of the 16th century, even extending to authoring a short but fascinating book entitled Counterpoint – A Survey (now, disappointingly, out of print). Cello and piano work together in a way that’s reminiscent of the Renaissance masters of polyphony, but with a piquant 20th-century touch. By contrast, Rawsthorne’s work is highly chromatic and passionate, with moments of crystalline delicacy as well as shattering power. Similarly, Moeran’s Sonata is a stirring piece, sounding at times like a more chromatically dense Brahms. There are hints at his interest in folk music, particularly in the dark and roiling first movement. All three works are finely played and recorded but I have reservations about programming. Rawsthorne and Moeran back-to-back results in a solid 35 minutes of similar weight; both Rubbra and Moeran wrote short works that could have been added to cleanse the palate. A…

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt initially became known for her Bach but lately she has ranged farther afield with composers such as Chabrier and Fauré. The last eight years have seen her gradually recording the complete Beethoven piano sonatas. This is the first disc in that series I have heard, and it is just terrific. In this program, Hewitt brings together the sunniest of the late sonatas (No 28, Op 101), the wittiest of the middle period sonatas (No 18: Op 31, No 3) and the rarely played Sonata No 11, Op 27. Without going to inappropriate extremes, she relishes dynamic contrasts and pays attention to detail with unfailing subtlety –yet, far from sounding studied, her playing retains a sense of spontaneity. Take the Allegro finale of the A Major sonata: Switching unexpectedly from exuberance to tenderness, intimate one moment and forthright the next, Hewitt makes it sound like a brilliant improvisation. Hewitt’s thoughtful, responsive performance of Sonata No 11 makes one wonder why the piece is not more popular (competition is fierce among the Beethoven sonatas, admittedly!) The first and third movements show us the composer in a playful mood, handling musical motifs like a juggler, while the second movement…

“I respect him very much… I consider him the most talented of all the modern composers.” Thus Rachmaninov, no less, in a 1912 encomium to Nikolai Medtner. Both pieces here have been recorded before, notably by Sviatoslav Richter (No 1) and David Oistrakh (No 3). But in hi-fi terms, these two Soviet-era accounts cannot begin to approach Hyperion’s sumptuously engineered issue, played with marvellous confidence and attention to each passing detail. Anyone with the slightest enthusiasm for post-Romantic musical melancholy, by a still-undervalued master, should own it. Lazy critics have traditionally pigeon-holed Medtner as “the Russian Brahms”. This soubriquet Medtner himself, with justice, resented. Very little in either of these compositions sounds Brahmsian, save inasmuch as Medtner largely shunned programmatic connotations. Fauré – rightly mentioned in the booklet note – is much likelier than Brahms to enter the hearer’s mind during the three-movement First Sonata, which never bespeaks youth, though Medtner finished it when still only in his 30s. Now and again, the rich textures and hints of woodland fantasy suggest Elgar also. The sole trace of Rachmaninov comes with the extraordinary bell-like opening to the finale. No wonder Medtner gave his 1936-38 Third Sonata the name Sonata Epica. At 47…

The ABC’s decision to record the complete Beethoven piano sonatas with Australia’s foremost specialist Gerard Willems was launched in the late 1990s and hailed as a first for the country. The three-year project was given an added frisson by Willems’s decision to use pianos built by Aussie Wayne Stuart rather than the ubiquitous Steinway.   Wayne Stuart’s skills as a piano maker were first tested when as a young man he played dance music published by J. Albert and Son at village halls around the country. The upright pianos were in varying states of disrepair and he often had to fix and tune them before the gig. Years later when his piano company in Melbourne wasn’t going anywhere Robert Albert, head of the publishing company, asked Stuart if they could come in on a joint venture. “I was hoping for ages that you would ask me that,” Stuart replied.   A couple of ARIAs later and with burgeoning sales, the next logical step – the five piano concertos – was announced with Willems being joined by Antony Walker conducting Sinfonia Australis, drawn from the cream of our orchestras. In 2010 Willems was back in the Ultimo studio tackling the mighty…

  Yundi (born in 1982), like Lang Lang, is a major musical sensation in China, where he is treated like a rock star by a generation of young devotees. China is a vast and expanding market in this area, as in many others, and if it takes celebrity promotion to get more people to fall in love with classical music, then I’m all for it! My problem concerns the narrowness of the repertoire, implying that a few recognised masterpieces exist and nothing else is worth bothering about. The farthest these young keyboard lions stray from the beaten track (apart from insipid transcriptions of traditional Chinese songs) are Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto (Lang) and Prokofiev’s Second (Yundi). Yundi approaches Beethoven in the same manner as the showmen concert pianists of old. His elongated opening phrases of the Pathétique indicate that these will be Romantic interpretations with no Classical or period flavour. He thunders the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata as if it were Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude. This places him at a considerable stylistic distance from young European pianists who have recorded Beethoven of late, like Ingrid Fliter, Alice Sara Ott or François Frédéric Guy, all of whom display an awareness of…