Having the task of hearing and comparing two complete cycles of Beethoven sonatas—plus a third, when Daniel Barenboim's earlier HMV series was essential to include too—has brought it home above all how much easier it is to use the CD. On these eleven CDs from Alfred Brendel one is able within seconds to select any movement from any sonata with an ease quite beyond that of the LP. Banding identifies every movement, whether linked or separated musically, and the actual format, I have found, has added to my appreciation and enjoyment. Where with some Wagner operas, for example, the compactness of CD format has not been very evident, here the 11 discs are housed in just three hinged plastic boxes, the first two containing four discs each, the third three discs, all neatly packaged along with a booklet in a slip-case. On special offer, Philips quote an expected retail price of around £ 75, which makes it excellent value for 11 hours of music ( ''total playing time: 658:49'' as the box puts it). One notes that the LP equivalent involves 13 records.
Brendel's performances were of course recorded in the days of analogue recording—between September 1970 and June 1977—and inevitably next to Barenboim's new Digital LP recordings some of those recorded earliest in the series sound limited in range and thick in texture, but that is very much a relative point. With tape hiss reduced to a minimum the digital transfers are first rate with plenty of percussive bite, though inevitably with the extra clarification of CD tiny discrepancies of sound are more evident. The point is that in my experience CD actually encourages you to go on listening in a way I have not generally found with this set on LP. I have enjoyed the late sonatas in particular. When they first appeared, I was not the only one to find them a little subdued compared with Brendel's own deleted Turnabout versions of a decade earlier, less urgent, less spontaneous, often less intense, but the measured, thoughtful quality, the reluctance to use this music for any sort of virtuoso display brings its own satisfaction. Brendel rarely chooses tempos that might be regarded as eccentric or wilful in the way that Barenboim occasionally does. Brendel's is a plainer, more sober view, but one which like Barenboim's performances of the cyle in the concert hall has consistent and deep concentration.
Spontaneity and electricity, extremes of expression in dynamic, tempo and phrasing as well as mood—those were qualities which made Barenboim's earlier HMV series so compelling, if sometimes provocative, and they consistently mark his playing this time too, though some of his more extreme readings—as for example the sleep-walking tempo for the finale of the Waldstein—have been modified to fall short of eccentricity. This time the spontaneity is even more evident. The recordings were made in Paris over a relatively short period between 1981 and early 1984. Barenboim took far longer over the HMV series, as did Brendel over his for Philips, and that is reflected in good ways and less good. In some of the early sonatas for example there is now a tendency from time to time for Barenboim to rush fences, to give a hint of breathlessness with already fast speeds. That is the exception, as indeed are the passages where plainly the pianist is taxed technically. Unlike Brendel, Barenboim uses the very stress to intensify the expression, the feeling of living communication. Even more than before these are performances full of flair, with the Appassionata first movement, for example, used more overtly for display, with extremes of light and dark made even more striking. Conversely the second and third movements are now plainer and simpler, the second taken at a more flowing Andante con moto.
It is hard to generalize about the developments in the Barenboim approach. The first point to recognize is his consistency, though broadly he treats the early sonatas rather more lightly than he did before, and that contrast is most evident in the first sonata of all, which on HMV Barenboim made unusually powerful, weighty even. This time the first movement is lighter and more urgent, the second simpler and more flowing, and generally throughout the cycle Barenboim places more importance on lyrical line, helped by a warmer recording acoustic, with the piano placed a little farther away than on his HMV series (or with Brendel) and the reverberation nicely judged to give bloom without confusion. This is very different and much more agreeable than the often aggressive sound which DG engineers have regularly given to Emil Gilels in Beethoven sonatas. The first movement of the E major Sonata, Op. 14 No. 1 brings another marked instance where Barenboim has rethought his earlier view, lighter and more resilient this time, where his HMV reading is close to Brendel's in its measured sobriety. The magnificent Op. 10 No. 3 Sonata brings in its first movement an example of Barenboim seeming to press ahead faster than the basic tempo, and then the great D minor slow movement, Largo molto e mesto, is this time a degree faster in the interests of flowing legato, and here as in most slow movements—as for example the Andante of the Pathetique, now taken a shade faster—the songfulness behind the inspiration is brought out.
The first movement of the Moonlight Sonata I find relatively disappointing, plainer, less hushed, missing the veiled tone quality which was so compelling before, but the light, flowing finale of Op. 31 No. 2, the Tempest, is now more magically Mendelssohnian than ever. The first movement of Op. 22 in B flat is also light and sparkling, where it was more biting before, but in the first movement of Op. 31 No. 3 in E flat Barenboim this time treats it more as a middle-period work, underlining the dramatic contrasts as he does in the first movement of the Appassionata. All three movements of the Waldstein are this time more lyrical, and that rule applies most notably in the late sonatas, not just in slow movements but equally strikingly in the great fugal movements, where inner parts are brought out more clearly and warmly. There are instances in the cycle where Barenboim's rethinking has tended towards rather more self-conscious phrasing, with agogic hesitations more apparent, but that is the exception, as is the even slower speed this time for the final Adagio variations of Op. 111, which before Barenboim took very slowly indeed. The close of the sonata is now steadier, less impulsive, if anything an even more satisfying conclusion, a reflection of maturity gaining over youthful exuberance. The counterpart slow movement of the Hammerklavier is a shade faster than before, not quite so hushed or rapt, but I prefer the outer movements this time, the first more forthright though still well below the controversial metronome marking, the finale bringing more extreme contrasts of light and dark, as do the first movements of Opp. 110 and 111. I was specially delighted at Barenboim's simple, flowing treatment of the first movement of Op. 101 in A (translated into Italian as Allegretto ma non troppo) which lies so enigmatically between simplified first movement and opening slow movement, one of the earliest of Beethoven's last period masterstrokes.
These are some of the more notable contrasts, but the whole new series is welcome not as a complete replacement of the HMV cycle, which remains a powerful and intense document of a formidably searching young interpreter, but as further evidence of the developing role of the gramophone, not pinning down interpretations rigidly for ever, setting them like flies in amber, so much as giving a living document of an interpreter at a particular period. I certainly look forward to this fine, revealing cycle being brought out on CD as well, though DG does not yet plan that. In the meantime the 12 LPs bring substantial advantages over the HMV series, not just in the quality of the digital recording but in presenting the sonatas on each record as near consecutively as possible and with no sonata, except the Hammerklavier, broken between sides.'