Not for Barry Douglas any of those eccentricities that for some of his young contemporaries pass as 'new light'. This is a broadly conceived, firmly controlled Hammerklavier that I enjoyed first and foremost for its honest-to-goodness musical truth—even if as a young artist his characterization has not the intensity of a Brendel or a Gilels as yet. Certainly from Brendel (recorded live for Philips at the Queen Elizabeth Hall) we meet a more highly-strung, manic Beethoven, in the grip of some untameable elemental force. Gilels on DG in his turn presents rather more of an Apollonian seer, a composer who has emerged from the struggle and glimpsed beyond.
Nothing in Douglas's performance impressed me more than the Adagio, over whose soul-baring he takes no less than 20'45'' (as against Gilels's 19'50'' and Brendel's fast sounding 17'52'', though in an earlier studio recording Brendel wisely allowed himself an extra two minutes). Here the movement is sustained with enough subtlety of tonal shading, continuity and poise to make you feel it could last for ever. The transition from these profoundly experienced spiritual regions to the fugal finale is no less searching and beautiful. The opening Allegro is full-bodied and imperious. Brendel, with his faster tempo, is more turbulent more defiant, while Gilels immediately arrests attention through his strong dynamic contrasts (with a particularly beautiful, translucent piano). Though not as deliberate as Gilels in the Scherzo, again here Douglas doesn't convey as much of the music's demonic urgency as Brendel. But the Trio is darkly ominous, and it ends with a fine burst of temperament. I think it must have been of the fugue that RO was thinking when in his original Gilels review he referred to ''arguments and textures appearing as the mechanism of a fine Swiss watch must do to a craftsman's glass''. Douglas does not aim at a similar transparency nor at Brendel's breath-taking eruptive brilliance. He allows himself one or two relaxations of tempo—I think just a bit too much for that D major 'voice from another world', for which Beethoven requests change of mood rather than of speed. But this movement still makes a strong ending to a consistently broadly-conceived reading. The recording itself is warmly reverberant, which perhaps suits the work better than the exceptional clarity accorded to Gilels by his DG engineers.
''This fervently lyrical piece enchants the listener with its frail decoration and vulnerable charm'' writes Barry Douglas of the Andante favori in the accompanying booklet. Certainly his own performance, as finely chiselled as it is limpid and tender, is utterly enchanting. While understanding why Beethoven, in his wisdom, rejected it from the Waldstein Sonata, I'd never realized before that it was quite such a little gem.'