Relishing in the excitement of the moment

{TABLE} Sonata in D Op 28 (Pastoral) ........... Beethoven Sonata in E flat Op 81a (Les Adieux) ... Beethoven Sonata in C minor, Op 111 .............. Beethoven {/TABLE} FOR the last three years the American pianist Robert Taub has been engaged in performing and recording the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven. Through the enterprise of Music for Galway, the full cycle, at a rate of three concerts a year, has been heard in Ireland.

In the earlier concerts in this series which I attended I found Taub a forceful Beethovenian and not always a reliable one. The flaws of accuracy were, happily, at their lowest in the last of the series.

If Taub's general intention is to convey something of the nature of Beethoven's musical questing through playing that is itself a shade uncomfortable and definitely avoids a feeling of security and stability, then he must be counted as having scored a success.

But the exaggerations of dynamics, the angularities of line, the forcefulness of attack, the blurred scrambles of some of the passagework - all have seemed to me an unnecessarily high price to pay. The tenor of Taub's performances has been to relish in the excitements of the moment rather than keep a strong hold on the picture of the whole.

In Galway on Saturday the closing recital took on an extra element of drama, as the performer stopped in midstride in the finale of the last sonata, Op. 111, overcome by the stifling heat of the venue.

Courageously, he started again from the very beginning. Second time around, there was a welcome feeling of settlement, which made this most challenging of works the most rewardingly played of the series.