Breakneck Beethoven

SIR – Recent letters (October 9) have complained that classical music is performed too fast.

As a student in the Seventies, I would sometimes listen to 78 rpm recordings of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, played by the great Artur Schnabel. Each side of the record had a playing time of about only five minutes so, by necessity, the performances were fast, and often got faster still as the movement progressed.

I would sometimes picture the sound engineer frantically signalling to Schnabel to get a move on as he was running out of groove. Ian Statham

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire