The first thing one notices about this release is the engineering, which envelops Kate Liu’s cultivated pianism within a gorgeous sonic framework. She conveys the intimate lyricism implicit throughout the Moderato movement of Beethoven’s Op 110 Sonata with the elasticity of her phrasing. Yet closer scrutiny reveals that her expressive gestures often counter what Beethoven asks for, such as adding extra fermatas where none exist (in the very third bar, for instance), or habitually hesitating before a sforzando or just before the peak of a climax. Another telltale example occurs at around the 2'38" mark, where Liu undermines the magical transitional effect of the unadorned D flats by ignoring the crucial crescendo. These details may seem excessively picky, yet Liu basically plays this movement as if it were a Chopin nocturne.

Fortunately, Liu plays the Allegro molto like Beethoven’s Beethoven, proving that you can stylishly serve up those hard-hitting accents and cross-rhythmic phrase groupings without pushing the music over the edge. She gauges the Adagio’s opening recitativo eloquently, although some of her hand desynchronisations, tenutos and caesuras in the Arioso blur the line between genuine expressivity and affectation. Yet the way she builds up the fugal textures with the utmost linear cogency and a carefully scaled dynamic game plan yields exultant and fulfilling results.

Liu’s broad tempo at the outset of Brahms’s F minor Sonata signifies that we’re in for a serious ride. Again, she makes a voluptuous sound, but her penchant for little holdbacks and big ritardandos sometimes stops the music in its tracks; her detailed probing of the second subject causes the music to lose shape, in contrast to the proportioned flexibility one hears in Alexandre Kantorow’s recent BIS recording. Granted, she does pick up steam in the development section, but in the end the overall impact is akin to a wandering rhapsody rather than a grandly designed sonata movement.

The pianist’s expansive frame of mind spills over into the Andante, where her expressive instincts befit the music’s yearning rapture. In her bracingly performed Scherzo, one might take issue with Liu’s slightly arch luftpausen before the leggiero sections, yet she compensates with unusually pointed left-hand staccatos. She brings a convincingly orchestral dimension to the Intermezzo by singing out the accented fortissimos and taking Brahms’s sudden pesante directive seriously.

It’s in the finale where Liu and Brahms truly merge as one. Many pianists tend to play the first page straight through. Here, however, Liu takes greater advantage of Brahms’s ma rubato marking and imparts specific characters to each fragmentary phrase, keeping listeners guessing as to what will happen next. Throughout the movement Liu’s varied articulations are congruent with the music’s shifts in mood, and she gives more direction to the coda’s bass lines than do most performers. Despite my reservations, Kate Liu’s sincere artistry and masterly pianism are never in doubt.

This review originally appeared in the SPRING 2025 issue of International Piano