Post Description

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Performer: Alfred Brendel
Audio CD (November 19,1996) Box set 10 CDs  Label: Philips CDA-6172

You have to have the Beethoven piano sonatas in your collection. You really do. Beethoven's nine symphonies get the attention, and deservedly so, for radically changing music forever, for elevating musical expression beyond the constraints of the Classical style. 
But if the symphonies were the extravagant public face of this transformation, the 32 piano sonatas, standing as a single body of work, are the private, personal works that demonstrate Beethoven's development and foreshadow the radical and sublime innovations in form and harmonic structure that would be devoured by generations of afficionados of the symphonies.
So the question isn't whether or not to include the Beethoven piano sonatas in your collection, but rather which collection. Brendel is not the flashiest of pianists: generally, he eschews bombast. There are those who will prefer a greater sense of physical excitement, especially in movements like the finale of the Hammerklavier Sonata (Op. 106). But there is never any exaggeration, or excessive underlining of points: one gets the feeling listening to these that there is no-one standing between yourself and the music.
The piano sound is, generally, very successfully captured, and Brendel's tone and clarity of line are exquisite. He gives the early sonatas their proper weight (listen, for instance, to the tragic intensity of the slow movement of Op. 10 No. 3); gives an absolutely sensational performance of - amongst others - the Pastoral Sonata (Op. 28); and as for those visionary late sonatas... there are several great recordings of these, but none more satisfying than these.