Earlier recordings by Jean-Francois Heisser have been largely given over to the music of late 19th- and early 20th-century composers: Saint-Saens, Granados, Martinu. The purpose of this latest set is to chart in music and words all Beethoven’s piano music from the year 1820 onwards.
Heisser’s Beethoven is solid-toned, expressive, powerfully driven. His performances of Opp 109, 110 and 111, agreeably positive, have much to be said for them, a few initial cavils notwithstanding. (Is the first statement of the Op 110 fuga sufficiently clear? Why is the vibrating demisemiquaver bass of Variation 4 quite so bumpily played?)
Yet what are here passing cavils, emerge in the Diabelli Variations as more thorough-going reservations. As early as Variation 3, one begins to wonder how secure Heisser’s technique is in the face of a musical weave as obviously intricate as this. Again, there is much to admire in the quicker, bolder variations and in some of the big lyric meditations. Equally, there are variations which Heisser makes nothing of. I have never heard the magical Variation 8 more plainly done (unless by Katchen on an old Decca recording) nor the mysterious Variation 20 so quick and loud. The very last Variation – proud, quizzical, graceful – also seems to elude Heisser. All of which causes one to return to the sonatas (to Op 110 in particular) and consider the degree to which effects are being applied from without rather than mined and shaped from within.
Advantageously priced though the new set is, in none of these works is Heisser a match for Brendel. Nor is the set helped by its notes. These are by several hands but dominated by a series of movement-by-movement meditations by writer Michel Butor. His thoughts on Variation 20 of the Diabelli Variations can be taken as representative: ‘Diana or the Moon. Through the rather slow healing, a few traces of the parade; a thought for St Ignatius Loyola, shaken by a panic-stricken conversion. Through the song of gratitude, Doctor Faustus helps the young women give birth to the Gemini child.’
If France had one (which it clearly hasn’t), such writing would be a prime candidate for ‘Le coin des Pseuds’.'