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General Search General GeneralBeethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4
Harmonia Mundi Fr. Search Harmonia Mundi Fr. by Ludwig van Beethoven Paul Lewis Search Ludwig van Beethoven Paul Lewis
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Released: 2008-05-13 Rating:  More Details: Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4 Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4 @Amazon Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4 @aStore |
Tracklisting:
Disc 1:
1. 1. Allegro molto e con brio
2. 2. Adagio molto
3. 3. Finale. Prestissimo
4. 1. Allegro
5. 2. Allegretto
6. 3. Finale. Presto
7. 1. Presto
8. 2. Largo e mesto
9. 3. Menuetto. Allegro
10. 4. Rondo. Allegro
Disc 2:
1. 1. Allegro
2. 2. Andante
3. 3. Scherzo. Allegro vivace
4. 4. Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo
5. 1. Andante
6. 2. Rondo. Allegro
7. 1. Allegro ma non troppo
8. 2. Tempo di menuetto
9. 1. Adagio - Allegro ("Les Adieux")
10. 2. Andante espressivo ("L'Absence")
11. 3. Vivacissimamente ("Le Retour")
Disc 3:
1. 1. Vivace ma non troppo / Adagio espressivo
2. 2. Prestissimo
3. 3. Andante. Gesangvoll mit innigster Empfindung, mezza voce
4. 1. Moderato cantabile molto espressivo
5. 2. Allegro molto
6. 3. Adagio ma non troppo - Allegro ma non troppo (Fuga)
7. 1. Maestoso - Allegro con brio ed appassionato
8. 2. Arietta. Adagio molto semplice e cantabile
Customer Reviews:
Only average at best
Conscientious, technically competent, no lapses in judgement -- that's the best that can be said here. Sound is surprisingly boomy (perhaps overpedalling?) which cannot help [no match for, say, Goode, or even the far older Kempff/DG].
Repeated listening to this album fails the ultimate test (for me) -- does it recreate the music in a personal, unforgettable, or original way? Not for me. I find the peaks and valleys shaved, the zing and ping of the earlier sonatas deleted, and there's no compensation with the last 3 sonatas. Schnabel made you feel, live the struggle and the roar and the awkwardness of the opening of Op111 -- it really was ungainly! But this is LvB at his extreme in creative destruction...you'd hardly know it with Lewis. OTOH, Michelangeli was like a god here in the purity of his detached classicism; the joinery and the combat which under Schnabel was highlighted, is subsumed in Michelangeli by an incredible abstraction analogous to a Greek classical sculpture -- you felt it was the only way that the form of the piece could read.
With Lewis, you recognize everything, all is very familiar and quite comfortable. The struggle and passion are there, but at a very human level. Like the earlier reviewer, the Gramophone gets kind of crazy with certain British artists -- rather like pushing Tim Henman as the next Wimbledom champion. Unfortunately, the British record of turning out supreme pianists is...kind of blank (except perhaps Curzon in the Liszt sonata comes closest). The reserve and conscious good taste of British artists is the rule, which the extraordinary exception of Janet Baker only proves.
Please do comparative listening before buying these discs. You may eventually feel you are missing something here if you should accidentally here (blind) another rendition by an artist of greater vision and temperament.
--- an ex-pianist
Continuing the Brendel style, with a touch more warmth 
Paul Lewis doesn't finish his Beethoven cycle quite as triumphantly, I think, as some reviewers might claim. "Les Adieux" and the "Pastorale" sonata stirke me as a bit pallid and underinflected, as do the fast movement in the Op. 10 series. But if you like assured, temperate playing in Beethoven (to steal a phrase from a previous reviewer), as opposed to fiery, heroic playing, Lewis has impeccable style and taste.
I say this as someone who would probably only listen to his Beethoven once. As with Kempff and Brendel, I don't get much out of restrained classical interpretations, particularly in middle and late Beethoven. The piano seems to bring out personal bias very strongly, and in my case Beethoven sounds intuitively "right" in the hands of Schnabel, Richter, Serkin, Annie Fischer, and Pollini, all of whom keep the heroic revolutionary in mind and project his music intensely. Lewis generally isn't tinkly, thank goodness, as Richard Goode too often is; even the great Gieseking veered that way in his last Beethoven recordings. But I wish Lewis had more emotional reach in his interpretations and more size to his sound.
Having said that, I agree with everyone else who finds him estimable in Beethoven, and I can't think of a cycle in the Kempff-Brendel mode that was better in recent years. Let's wait and see what young Jonathan Biss turns into, however, not to mention a hugely promising European like Rafal Blechacz from Poland.
Definitive? Don't know. Delightful? Absolutely
I'm not an authority on the Beethoven Sonatas and I don't read scores, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the playing here. But if you have ears, you can hear, and I can find nothing but delight in the playing of these wonderfully varied pieces. The accompanying booklet could be richer and deeper, but there is ample information about Beethoven's work to be found. Paul is a player with a wonderful sense of dynamics, and the music is sublime.
Estupeda coleccion
Despues de haber escuchado practicamente todas las versiones de las sonatas de Beethoven, esta puede ser mi favorita, ademas de completa, de calidad de sonido perfecto. tengo las versiones de Barenboim: penosas. las de Kovacevich me gustan mucho pero son sosas y violentas. las de Gould son maravillosamente sensuales pero su sonido flojo. las de schnabel las mejores pero tan antiguas y con ese sonido. luego las de Perahia pero solo tiene 10 sonatas grabadas , una pena, pero es mi pianista favorito.
Estas son magnificas, pero el precio caro.
Finally, a pianist who can compete with Schnabel!
A friend brought over this Volume, saying that it was voted as Album of the Year by the Grammophone. I heard the Sonata no. 31 (the first piece of piano music I had ever heard, when I was about 14), and I was incredibly moved at the sensitivity of the playing. I got the entire volume (I will get the others soon) and I must say that Lewis is the most convincing and subtle pianist in this literature since Artur Schnabel. Although there are differences between the two pianists, Lewis shares with Schnabel an incredibly subtle dynamic control and seamless phrasing. Where he differs from the older pianist is his broader tempi and more deliberate style, given more to gradual rather than sudden tempo fluctuations. But he also has Schnabel's firm bass foundation, offering a rumbling, even on occasion ominous underpinning to the upper voices. I would never part with the Schnabel set, but at the same time, I would not want to be without Lewis either. This is the greatest piano music ever written.
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