Recording of the Month
Beethoven Unbound Llŷr Williams
‘Williams has a marvellous transparency of sound, and his articulation even at the fastest tempos is phenomenally clean’
Beethoven Unbound Beethoven: Complete piano sonatas
Lly^ r Williams (piano)
Signum Records SIGCD527
835:57 mins (12 discs)
Having caught several of the Wigmore recitals out of which this box of live recordings was compiled, I had some idea what to expect, but when listened in sequence the whole thing has epic sweep. Although the last three sonatas make a perfect final disc, Lly^r Williams has not structured this collection chronologically: instead, he’s chosen to turn it into a series of recital programmes, each of which follows a satisfying arc.
Thus, for example, he avoids placing the two little Op. 49 sonatas, which resemble each other cosily, back-to-back: instead they book-end the Diabelli Variations, with the Rondo of Op. 49 No. 1 coming as a ‘rococo-style upbeat’ to Diabelli’s waltz, and the minuet in Op. 49 No. 2 responding to the last of the variations.
Even more interestingly, he’s turned CD3 into what he calls a ‘Fantasy Album’, starting with the Fantasia Op. 77 – ‘Beethoven’s most totally bonkers piece’ – and moving on to those sonatas arranged on the fantasy-principle, the two Op. 27s and Op. 101. By placing the Op. 35 variations alongside the variations of the Op. 26 Sonata, he shows different aspects of Beethoven’s approach to that form.
Since Williams’s Beethoven series at the Wigmore
Hall overlapped with a corresponding series at the same venue by Igor Levit, and since that Russian-german pianist is sometimes held up as the brand-leader for this music, I would make a crucial distinction between them. There’s no denying Levit’s
Lly^r Williams’s ‘plain’ style of playing allows each sonata’s character to emerge vividly
ability to create keyboard magic, but one senses that with him effects are paramount. With Williams, however, expressiveness is all. He paradoxically achieves this through emotional restraint, and in a style which you might call ‘plain’, but which allows the individual character of each sonata to emerge vividly. Apart from the Op. 49 pair, no two are remotely alike.
Williams has a marvellous transparency of sound, and his articulation even at the fastest tempos is phenomenally clean. He never overdoes his effects: he allows the evanescent beauty of the Op. 54 perpetuum mobile to flower thanks to the sheer evenness of his touch, and he lets Beethoven’s jokes tell themselves. He also knows when to pull right back: the three chords opening the Adieux Sonata expand majestically in the surrounding silence, as do the opening bars of the Pathétique – a simple ploy which induces us to listen with particular attention. We will all have our disagreements – I dislike his galumphing tempo for the first movement of the Pastoral – but by and large his approach is massively persuasive.
There are already 14 sets of these sonatas on my shelf, but this is the one – with its brilliantly informative accompanying monograph by Misha Donat – to which I shall most often return.
For the oracular Adagios, for the big-boned treatment of ‘small’ sonatas like Op. 14
No. 1, for the dream-like journey of the Hammerklavier’s slow movement, and for the pellucid perfection of
Op. 110, as Williams strips away the accumulated expectations we bring to that too-often performed work. A stunning achievement. Hear excerpts and a discussion of this recording on the monthly BBC Music Magazine Podcast available free on itunes or classical-music.com