Solomon's 1952 recording of the Hammerklavier Sonata is one of the great recordings of the century. Truth to tell, few performances that have been recorded since have either matched it or significantly improved upon it. (Pollini's 1977 DG recording, perhaps—12/86—or a live Philips 1983 Brendel recording—7/86, nla.) At the heart of Solomon's performance there is as calm and searching an account of the slow movement as you are likely to hear this side of the Great Divide. And the outer movements are also wonderfully well done. Music that is so easy to muddle and arrest is here fierily played; Solomon at his lucid, quick-witted best. The CD transfer is astonishing. Play it after any of the various LP versions of yesteryear and it is as if a door has been flung open. It is as though previously we have merely been eavesdropping on the performance; now, 40 years on, we are finally in the presence of the thing itself. I found it all profoundly moving. What's more, by an agreeable piece of planning, EMI have retained the juxtaposition of the 9/69 LP reissue (nla): Solomon's glorious account of the A major Sonata, Op. 101 as the Hammerklavier's proud harbinger.
We must be grateful that Solomon had completed his recording of these six late sonatas before his career was abruptly ended by a stroke in the latter part of 1956. The Sonatas, Op. 90 and Op. 110 were recorded in August 1956. The warning signs were, in retrospect, already there as Bryan Crimp's note interestingly reveals. The sessions were a nightmare for the pianist, whose hitherto infallible touch was being all too obviously undermined. One lapse in the finale of Op. 110 was never completely tidied, hence the delay in issuing the recording. (It finally appeared in 1962 on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.) Now, how bitter the irony seems; Solomon on the verge of a catastrophic illness recording a sonata Beethoven himself had written as a song of thanksgiving for the resolution of tribulations past. Yet, listening to these edited tapes one would hardly know anything was amiss. There is the odd fumble in the Scherzo of Op. 110; but, if anything, the playing has even greater resolve, both in Op. 110 and in a songful (but never sentimental) account of Op. 90.
The recordings of Opp. 109 and 111 date from 1951. Sonata, Op. 109 is very fine; Op. 111 is—by Solomon's standards—a shade wooden in places, both as a performance and as a recording. Still, this is a wonderful set, very much a collectors' item. All we need now is for EMI to reissue his 1955 HMV recording of the Emperor Piano Concerto, a classic account that has been all too rarely available in recent decades. Unless it reappears soon, we shall have to send in the SAS.'