There are marvellous things here, but also, I find, troughs of ordinariness which are difficult to understand. From the opening of the Moonlight it is clear that Ogdon can play like a listener—that is, with an unselfconscious, unforced continuity, allowing the adagio to flow towards andante and moulding the texture as the ear, not the page, dictates. The finale is devilishly driven, with some loss of fine detail quite in keeping with the perilous spirit of the whole. And Fate has never hammered more menacingly at the door than in Ogdon's rock-like account of the Appassionata first movement. In these movements the elemental Beethovenian force breaks through in the most remarkable way. It is as though Ogdon's terrible personal experiences have put him beyond reach of some of the deadening pressures of the musical 'scene'—hang interpretation, this is simply how the music goes.
But did he really intend to be so severe with the Moonlight's central allegretto?—not so much a ''flower between two abysses'' (Liszt), more a clump of nettles. The Pathetique I find particularly disappointing—striving for but not achieving dramatic immediacy, most unsure of itself in the finale. And the last movement of the Appassionata, after the searching and heartfelt variations, sacrifices so much in clarity of fingerwork that the artistic message itself becomes blurred.
Despite its reasonable price I cannot see how this can be recommended in toto in preference to Barenboim (EMI CDC7 47345-2, 9/86); but for the times when it seems to call forth the very presence of the composer it demands to be heard and have its apparent oddities reconsidered at length.'