For some years now Brendel’s discography has been enriched by occasional releases of recorded live performances – correctives, alternatives or supplements, as he puts it, to his studio recordings. Several pianists profess a lack of interest in their recordings, live or otherwise, once they are made, and there cannot be many great musicians who regard the microphone as a friend. Whether Brendel likes the mike or not, he is glad enough, he says, to have it there when things go well. It’s interesting that, from his early days, he has been committed to making recording work for him as well as for us, using it to monitor his work and verify and build on his achievements. Making appointments with posterity, as Clifford Curzon once described it, used to frighten him and some other major artists out of their wits. If it has ever inhibited Brendel, he must be glad now to feel that what he sets down about a piece in the studio isn’t necessarily his last word.
To the same degree that his live recordings of the Beethoven Diabelli Variations and the Hammerklavier Sonata are splendid to have, these Schubert sonatas are most welcome. The enchanting, constantly surprising and utterly characteristic B major Sonata of 1817, not often played but an important piece, appears in Brendel’s discography for the first time. Having decided to start my listening with this, I assumed it would come up first on disc 1. It doesn’t, and naturally nothing could have been easier than to reprogramme the machine; but no question of it. With the opening chord of the great G major Sonata I was hooked – have you had this experience? – a willing traveller through landscapes rich in visions of calm and serenity but which often show a harsher aspect, the reality of the here and now, and with narrative and dancing accompanying the wandering journey. Or something like that… How Mahler must have admired this sonata. I cannot remember when I enjoyed it more, and my slightly unexpected encounter made the experience all the more pleasurable.
I must have heard Brendel play the A major Sonata of Schubert’s a dozen times last year, but never more vividly. Again, you don’t have to find a way in: he is there for you from the beginning. Is he now more persuasive than ever in the finales of these big pieces? Certainly a characteristic he shares with only the finest performers is that he has kept his music-making young, through a continuous renewal of his vision. And in Schubert that vision is an all-seeing one which does justice not only to the supreme lyricist but to the assaults of fever and delusion that are as menacing and terrifying in some of the sonatas as in the songs. And as always when Brendel is at his best, he conveys a sense of complete emotional and intellectual coherence, as well as great freedom. The playing is pretty stunning, too.
The B major Sonata, though slighter than the others, is a delight, and I like the lighter manner Brendel finds for it: almost carefree, as Schubert was in 1817. I’m a little disappointed by the sound in the B flat Sonata, where the piano is too distant for my taste – or is it just that the Royal Festival Hall is not in the same league as an acoustic as Snape Maltings, the Concertgebouw or the Alte Oper in Frankfurt? None of the Schubert sonatas could be said to thrive in halls of this size, but that wasn’t a thought that entered my head when listening to the other three. There, I find the sound warm and justly distanced (and the pianos better) and the halls making a more positive contribution. Applause after each piece; quite a lot of singalong from him in the A major, but not enough to be a worry; and no coughing or audience noise to speak of anywhere except in the B flat Sonata, where, of course, I could have done without it.'