Daniel Barenboim pf

Unitel Editions

Ever since his Buenos Aires recital debut as a prodigy in 1950, Daniel Barenboim has been an old soul at the piano, inspired by venerable models such as the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. As such, Barenboim's pianism tends to be marked by a preternatural gravity to the point of obstinate humourlessness.

Barenboim will celebrate his 80th birthday in November, but recently announced via social media that he is stepping back from ‘some performing activities, especially conducting engagements for the coming months’ to concentrate on his health, following a diagnosis of a serious neurological condition.

This filmed cycle of the Beethoven sonatas, which follows up Barenboim's studio recordings released in 2020 (DG), was captured over the course of a single month during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. It is Barenboim's reaction as a public intellectual, transcending questions of digital capacity. Like the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who rushed out two timely but half-baked books about the pandemic, Barenboim's filmed Beethovenian statement might suggest that at parlous times, statements are expected from cultural leaders, and he is no shirker.

Unsurprisingly, the most impactful performances here are of ponderous slow movements. Among complete works, the full lugubrious weight of the Appassionata Sonata in F minor Op 57 has a convincing dollop of Ludwigian obstreperousness, expressive enough to overshadow digital issues. Especially the Appassionata's second movement, marked Andante con moto, has a conceptual thoroughness and candour that is risk-taking, teetering on the brink more than once, but with a symphonic scope that Barenboim clearly aims for in his performances.

Similarly, Barenboim's Matthew Arnold-like high seriousness, to the point of oppressiveness, can be heard in the sombre movement marked Adagio cantabile of the Sonata in F-sharp major Op 78. This stark reading reminds us that although the auditorium in which he played was ostensibly empty, in reality Covid stalked the aisles.

Although cut from the same interpretive cloth, Barenboim's reading of the Sonata in C minor Op 111 merely sounds overstated and melodramatic. Implicit awareness of mortality weighs down several other sonatas unduly, with a curiously lumbering and ominous Moonlight Sonata Op 27/2, as if intended to serve as soundtrack for a horror film. The Sonata in G major Op 31/1 is excessively pugnacious, the Pathétique Sonata Op 13 positively funereal, and in the Waldstein Sonata Op 53 the pianist's fingers lag behind the musical phrases. The Sonata in F major Op 54, marked tempo d'un menuetto, is played with a turgid lack of balletic sense. It is discomfiting to see how gingerly Barenboim negotiates the opening of the Hammerklavier Sonata Op 106.

The real gem of this set, in addition to the Appassionata, is found in three sessions dubbed masterclasses, although audienceless. In these, Barenboim coaches young professional pianists who are nevertheless well past student age. Of those included here, the Frenchman Alexandre Kantorow could in all likelihood record a Beethoven sonata cycle vastly more compelling than Barenboim's of 2020.

© HARALD HOFFMANN/DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON

Barenboim has long been didactically inclined, and generations of pianists, conductors and pianist-conductors have achieved starry careers in part due to his mentorship. Rows of empty seats in the Berlin hall obviate any inclination to showboat or entertain an audience. Instead, a civilised, if one-sided, conversation is presented as a single Beethoven sonata is played each by Kantorow, his compatriot Nathalia Milstein and Germany's Fabian Müller.

It is likewise intriguing to hear Barenboim pontificate to other young pianists in contemporaneously filmed meetings not included here, but posted on the website of the Pierre Boulez Saal. He informs the Hungarian-American Julia Hamos about the symphonic inspiration of his pianism, conceiving a piano crescendo in terms of how orchestral instruments must intensify in sound starting with the least resonant ones first, to avoid covering the sound.

Ever the polyglot, Barenboim reminds the Sicilian pianist Giuseppe Guarrera that by the tempo indication Allegro assai, Beethoven meant ‘very fast’ instead of ‘rather fast’, an assertion with which musicologists may quibble.

The young pianists express respect, rather than overt affection, but Barenboim is far more humane here than in his sometimes fiery podium persona or usual keyboard sullenness. Sometimes venerable pianists reach a point where speaking about music has happier results than trying to show how it should be done in sustained performance.