The conjunction of Beethoven's first and last sonatas makes for a startling rather than an illuminating contrast, it may be thought, but I've enjoyed this disc and shall hope to encounter Robert Taub again in Beethoven. I'd heard him before only in Milton Babbitt (HM5160, 5/86; HMC90 5160); for Harmonia Mundi he has also recorded Schumann's Davidsbundlertanze and some Liszt (HM5133; HMC90 5133) and he's dearly among the most musicianly and interesting of the young American pianists to have announced themselves in recent years.
Perhaps it takes a young man to meet so generously the demands for impassioned energy in the first movement of Op. 111 (the marking is allegro con brio ed appassionato), and at such a fiery tempo. Yet this is authentic Beethovenian energy, not mere agitation, fuelled by the mind rather than the fingers alone, and expertly controlled and released as well as generated. I wondered whether the passages of suspended calm in 'second subject' territory were as convincingly done as the rest: Taub anticipates the meno allegro indication by a couple of bars and I wish he didn't apply the brakes quite so soon. No question, though, that he sees the movement whole and gives an exhilarating account of it. You can tell his calibre from the start, from the way he grades his sound through the harmonic movement of the first page before the allegro erupts. Who said that pianists have to be old and grey before we can expect them to have insights into Beethoven's last sonatas? And what pianist with special enthusiasm for Op. 111 would want to hold back from exploring such extraordinary regions of sound as it offers? In the sound resides the sense. They are never divorced in Taub's interpretation, and on the journey he invites one to take with him he seems to me a dependable and stimulating guide, even if he doesn't show one everything.
His quality is well displayed in the F minor Sonata too. He gives it a wider range of dynamics and colouring than we often hear—which is all to the good, though maybe the gentler side of the piece registers more strongly than the brilliant and demonic one, and I did feel the finale had been tamed somewhat. I have been listening to the CD and liked the warm and well balanced sound, though on my review copy the treble tends to fly around a bit in the earlier sonata.'