CLASSICAL

The latest releases reviewed

BEETHOVEN: PIANO SONATAS OP 10; PIANO SONATA OP 13 (PATHÉTIQUE) András SchiffECM New Series 476 3100 ***

For something to be nice or pleasant isn't possible with Beethoven, says András Schiff in the printed interview accompanying the second instalment of his new Beethoven sonata cycle, recorded in concert at the Tonhalle in Zurich. The playing also reflects his view that "the corners and edges in his music stick out sharply and must be heard to do so". If you like a performing style which seems to allow the music to speak for itself, Schiff is unlikely to be the man for you. He's combed these pieces for a sense of struggle to represent the daring iconoclasm of the young Beethoven. You'll also find him adding a few embellishments of his own, and taking the unusual step (though he's not alone in this) of including the slow introduction in the exposition repeat of the Pathétique Sonata. www.ecmrecords.com

BEETHOVEN: PIANO SONATAS IN E OP 109, IN A FLAT OP 110, IN C MINOR OP 111 Mitsuko Uchida Philips 475 6935 ****

Unlike Schiff, Mitsuko Uchida begins her approach to Beethoven sonatas through the late works rather than the early ones. Her handling of the last three sonatas is sonorous, observant, carefully controlled. This is not to suggest that Uchida's playing is bland, but if there is a flaw it is its very flawlessness, the sense that everything in the music has been so thoroughly resolved. It's not actually a matter of the sound itself. Uchida's concept of beauty is quite accepting of piano tone with bite. It's just that, in the achievement of moment-by-moment perfection, the sense of transcendence, of Beethoven reaching beyond the reachable, has become too muted. www.deccaclassics.com

BEETHOVEN: COMPLETE PIANO SONATAS Wilhelm Backhaus Decca Original Masters 475 7198 (8 CDs) ***

Wilhelm Backhaus (1884-1969) is in the record books for a recording career that covered more than 60 years. He was nearly 70 when he began his first Beethoven sonata cycle for Decca in 1952, and a second, in stereo, followed between 1958 and 1969. It's the stereo that's re-issued here, with the original mono 1952 Hammerklavier Sonata, a work he never re-recorded. There's a take it or leave it aspect to Backhaus's approach which tends to divide listeners. It's not that he's being literal about the musical text - he's sometimes anything but - rather that he presents it in a manner so undecorated and apparently simple, it's easy to read the delivery as perfunctory or prosaic. Inspect it closely and you'll find a lot that's not to be taken for granted. It's an unusual and fluctuating, sometimes mesmeric, sometimes infuriating combination of the insightful and the utilitarian. www.deccaclassics.com

MOZART: SIX "HAYDN" QUARTETS Esterházy String Quartet Decca 475 7108 (3 CDs) ***

These recordings of the six great string quartets Mozart reverentially dedicated to Haydn were made just over a quarter of a century ago, when a certain austerity was almost a badge of honour in the period performance movement. As a documentation of an important staging post in 20th-century performance practice, the set is already of historical interest. The sound will probably be a little thin and wiry for modern tastes, but the actual music-making has a lot to commend it. When you think of the often sonically over-weight and expressively intrusive manner of ensembles for whom Mozart's quartets are only ever really a starter rather than the main course, the Esterházys function as a kind of still necessary, slightly hairshirty, back-to-basics, less is more corrective. www.deccaclassics.com