The latest instalment in Angela Hewitt’s traversal of Beethoven’s piano sonatas – Vol 7, though not packaged as such – focuses on three middle-period sonatas and concludes with Op 109. In her booklet notes, Hewitt offers insights into the aetiology of her interpretations.

One curious aspect of Hewitt’s Beethoven is the pervasive absence of rhythmic tension. Change, be it of texture, tempo, harmony or affect, seems always prepared by a subtle, reflexive pulling back. This mitigates cumulative suspense, surprise at an unanticipated direction, even delight at a humorous juxtaposition, because we’ve been tipped off in advance. It also has the effect of homogenising the macrocosmic dimension of sonata structure. With the reduction of tension in quick movements, the slow movements’ contrasting affect, whether intended to relax or ratchet up the expressive urgency, is rendered less vivid. In place of Beethoven’s vibrant rhetoric, his often emphatic point of view, a sort of blandness becomes the status quo.

To cite random examples, the Tempest Sonata’s first movement hinges on a back-and-forth between a scene-setting largo arpeggio, an affect which expands as the movement progresses, and the agitated tumult that gives the sonata its name. Near the end of the development (5'46"), Beethoven enlarges the largo affect to a full-blown recitative, marked ‘simply and with expression’. Here it is treated with such freedom that the underlying pulse is lost, and with it any sense of pathos.

In the loftier realms of Op 109, following a pedestrian Vivace ma non troppo and a Prestissimo verging on the nonchalant, the beautiful aria and its variations gradually become so sapped of energy that, by the sixth variation, forward motion seems a weary plod from beat to beat. Whether such procedures can intimate an ascent to supernal grace must remain moot.