If I am not mistaken this is Stephen Kovacevich's first solo recording for six or seven years, and it demonstrates many of the virtues that made his earlier Beethoven recordings so memorable (not least his now reissued Philips Diabelli Variations, 8/90). Here are sensitivity without pre- ciousness, dramatic tension without ham acting, freedom without arbitrary distortion; here above all is a constant awareness of Beethoven's urge towards the transcendent.
Curiously I find these qualities serve the music best in Op. 90, the least obviously 'deep' of the three sonatas. At least the first movement holds a fine balance between the moments of eruption and withdrawal which devolve from the opening theme. Nor would I be concerned that the balancing second movement is less mellow than usual; a glimpse of darker stirrings beneath the surface, a sense that the teneramente is not easily achieved, helps to hold the entire work together. But by the end I was beginning to wonder how deliberate the constant unease was. I doubt, for instance, whether the Stephen Bishop of old would have let pass bars 181ff. in the second movement where the bass drops out of earshot entirely; and the so-difficult final pay-off seems to me unconvincing.
Mixed feelings too about Kovacevich's Op. 101. There are some treasurable insights in the first movement, but I would not care to revisit either the gratuitously ferocious alla marcia or the excessively effortful and joyless finale, both of which are disfigured by thrashed final chords. At such moments the Monica Seles-like exhalations also feel intrusive (though otherwise the recorded sound is pretty well exemplary).
And Op. 111 seems to me frankly unsuccessful. The first movement is over-pedalled and overdramatized, in a way which flattens out the contour of expressive incident; the arietta needs a finer-drawn cantabile and the final pages fail to deliver the sense of transcendence Kovacevich so rightly strives for. I would also query his view of the l'istesso tempo between Variations 1 and 2. By keeping the semiquaver pulse constant, rather than the three larger beats, the tempo for the remainder of the movement is either faster than the theme, or, as here, it has to be fudged. Kovacevich's approach is one shared by many fine pianists and it can be made to sound plausible; but I do feel that it detracts significantly from the cumulative effect.'