Interest here of course centres on the legendary, six-octave grand of 1817, sent to Beethoven at the end of that year as a present from Thomas Broadwood, head of the renowned English firm of John Broadwood and Sons. ''I shall regard it as an altar on which I will place the most beautiful offerings of my spirit to the divine Apollo'' so said Beethoven in his letter of thanks. After his death the instrument ended up, much the worse for wear, at Weimar, in the keeping of Liszt, who in his turn bequeathed it to the Hungarian National Museum. Not until last year in Budapest was it restored to its original glory by the American-born David Winston. And the honour of allowing England to hear it, in the course of a brief tour, has fallen to Melvyn Tan.
Recorded as recently as last May in Forde Abbey, Dorset, his programme in itself is a delight, not forgetting the opening and closing salutes to the instrument's begetters through the racy God save the King and Rule Britannia Variations of 1803. But nothing shows off the Broadwood better—and surely Tan himself too—than the curiously unpredictable G minor Fantasia of 1809 chosen as centre-piece. Were it not for the fact that it, too, long pre-dated this piano's arrival, you could close your eyes and imagine that here was Beethoven himself, improvising for his friends, to demonstrate just what warmth, strength, range and bravura could be drawn from such a keyboard, then the most 'modern' in the world.
The main musical substance nevertheless comes in the Bagatelles, dating from 1802 in the case of the first set of Op. 33 to 1824 in the third and last set of Op. 126 miniatures, all, yet in their own way more revealing self-portraits of the maturing composer in his capricious daily mood-changes than even his most personal letters. In view of the music's own inbuilt caprice, I could have done without a few little extra rhythmic idiosyncrasies from Tan himself, such as that minuscule, yet still disruptive hesitation at the end of the first sentence in Op. 126 No. 4 (track 24 first heard at 0'06''). More importantly, I thought his choice of tempo for some of the Allegretto and Andante pieces a shade too fast, not least in the exquisitely tender Op. 33 No. 6 in D marked con una certa espressione parlante. Just out of curiosity I got out my old Schnabel LP and found just how much more eloquently this and several others do in fact 'speak' in that artist's more leisurely flow. But never mind. The good from Tan, in its spontaneity, so overwhelmingly outweighs all else that this faithfully recorded disc remains a true collector's piece. '