Reviews

For the Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer, the slow movement of Beethoven's Sonata in G, Op. 31 No. 1, evoked nostalgia for the past. "Have you ever come across an old country house in the middle of an old-world park with a murmuring fountain?" he asked.

MacGregor, Cassard, Tinney. Bantry House, Co Cork

Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 16-22

"When the great Venetian blinds are opened the light floods into a world long since vanished - a world of faded carpets, furniture of all periods, with an old spinet and a smell of withered rose-leaves." For the English pianist Denis Matthews, the same movement "elaborates on a common enough melodic formula in a richly pianistic manner that looks forward to the Romantics". Francis Humphrys, in his programme note for the ongoing Beethoven sonata cycle in Bantry House, finds the composer using "a detached style of fingering to create a delightful imitation of an old-fashioned style of operatic singing that he clearly regarded with a mixture of affection and amusement".

I'm not sure which of these three responses could best be associated with Joanna MacGregor's performance of the movement on Tuesday. Perhaps a realignment of Matthews, in which the music is viewed from a romantic perspective, played as we imagine Liszt might have played Liszt rather than Beethoven, or, coming closer to our own time, as the Hungarian pianist Georges Cziffra tended to tackle Beethoven, with Lisztian ardour. Certainly there was a heavily-pedalled, much pulled-about romantic blur to MacGregor's reading of this and also of the Waldstein Sonata.

Aligning MacGregor with the free and easy Cziffra (and being free and easy with Beethoven's text is rarely a rewarding undertaking), it's interesting to speculate who the other two performers of this cycle might be likened to.

Philippe Cassard, strange as it may seem, with his tendency to press fast speeds to extremes, and his highly questionable interest in explosive accents - all well in evidence in the Sonata in D minor, Op. 31 No. 2 (the Tempest) - might be a sort of Glenn Gould, querying the music from the outside, but without that consistent special finesse which guaranteed that Gould's explorations, however far-fetched, would always retain exceptional pianistic interest.

Hugh Tinney comes across as the Pollini of the trio. On Tuesday he mixed intellectual rigour, magisterial reserve and digital precision to great effect in two of the less frequently-heard sonatas - in E flat, Op. 31 No. 3, and in F, Op. 54.

The Sonata in E flat, a four-movement work without an actual slow movement, and the two-movement Sonata in F, which is full of the strangest juxtapositions, can give the impression of sounding like nothing else in Beethoven's output. Indeed, they have an individuality that even makes them sound not quite Beethovenian.

Tinney took them at face value, eschewed all eccentricities, and kept his listeners hanging on every note. It's not exactly easy to outshine the Waldstein or the Tempest with either of these works, but that's exactly what Tinney so mesmerisingly brought off.