Beethoven Piano Your resource for the piano music of Ludwig van Beethoven

asin: B00004Y6OG binding: Audio CD list price: $17.98 USD amazon price: $17.98 USD

Sviatoslav Richter was devoted to Beethoven and kept nearly two dozen of the composer's 32 sonatas in his active repertory. But some sonatas--such as No. 3 in C Major (Opus 2, No. 3), No. 7 in D Major (Opus 10, No. 3), and No. 32 in C Minor (Opus 111)--turned up on Richter programs decade after decade, while others appeared for a season or so never to return. Richter's relationship to Sonata No. 29 in B-flat (Hammerklavier) belongs to the latter category. He performed it all over Europe in the spring and summer of 1975 and seems never to have programmed it again. One wonders why. Richter was designed by God to perform the Hammerklavier. He had the huge hands necessary for its reckless leaps, the strength and stamina for its marathon length, and the intellect necessary to make lucid its grinding dissonance and (in the finale) its pounding counterpoint. Perhaps Richter thought that at 60--his age when he began to program it--he was a little too old for the Hammerklavier. Certainly, even a Richter enthusiast can be forgiven for wishing the pianist had turned to the piece 10 years earlier. Still, the pianist's Hammerklavier is heroically grand and fiercely energetic. Of the three performances of the sonata that Richter gave in a two-week period (and that have been preserved on disc) in London, Prague, and Aldeburgh (this disc), this recording is probably best-suited to most listeners. While not as exciting as the risk-taking Prague performance, it is much better recorded and more accurate. It also contains several bonuses: beautifully played versions of Beethoven's Sonata No. 3 and of three bagatelles from the composer's Opus 126. --Stephen Wigler