''I am not satisfied with my works to date, and from now on I want to take a new path'', so Beethoven allegedly confessed not long before embarking on the three sonatas of Op. 31, here introduced into the CD catalogue as a set played on a fortepiano (by Derek Adlam after Anton Walter, Vienna; Nannette Streicher, Vienna 1815). As no great lover of period instruments for Beethoven sonatas, I anticipated that it would be in the second in D minor (the only one of the three to betray the darkness from which it grew in 1802) that I would be most aware of limited powers of expression. But it was only near the end— and especially in the last fortissimo outburst at about 6'09'' in track 6—that I missed sheer volume.
In general this performance is finely proportioned and intense enough to convey every inch of the music's stature. Even Tan's timing of the mysterious opening arpeggio gives warning of the drama to come in the first movement. In the Adagio he sustains his slow tempo with a classical poise while never allowing us to forget, in his cutting definition of the recurrent accompanying triplet motif, the undertones beneath its major-key calm. The finale has an effortless continuity reminding us why Kempff once likened it to ''the voice of the eternally flowing sea.''
Curiously it was the less forward-looking G major Sonata which in the faster figuration of its flanking movements once or twice had me longing for the greater clarity of a modern grand—likewise its greater ability to sing in the slow movement. But Tan delights in the work's teasing surprises without affectation, and how beautifully he conveys the mystery of modulation in the Adagio grazioso (not least at 2'43'' in track 2). In the E flat Sonata I enjoyed his cajoling lyrical charm in the opening movement and the Menuetto as much as his pin-point clarity in the Scherzo and his mounting flames in the finale. The recording struck me as very faithful.'