‘Historical’ recordings usually fit one of two categories, those that are so artistically exceptional that they transcend period musical manners and dated sound (Toscanini’s Falstaff, Furtwangler’s Tristan, Lipatti’s Chopin) and those that, while interpretatively of great interest, can only really be understood with reference to personal biography and the performing conventions of the day. For although Frederic Lamond’s Beethoven recordings have much to teach us, ‘blind’ listening is likely to suggest more questions than answers. One needs to know something of the pianist’s pedigree and character.
Frederic Lamond was born in Glasgow in 1868, studied with Max Schwarz, von Bulow and Liszt, composed fairly extensively and was thoroughly besotted with Beethoven’s music. “I longed for pureness, truth, simplicity …” he once wrote; “Beethoven was my god – the creed of my life – my one and all.” The negative upshot of this holy obsession was contempt for “the practical side of life”, though even as late as 1945 Lamond was being billed as “the greatest living exponent of Beethoven”. Lamond was in his mid-fifties when the earliest of these recordings (1922) was made – the first ever of Beethoven’s Fifth Concerto, and one easily imagines him puffing and panting his way through the Emperor’s first movement. The tempo is recklessly fast, the orchestra comically undernourished (though fairly vital), and the overall approach bluff, impetuous and freewheeling. Idiosyncrasies abound (the way Lamond allows the orchestral chords to extend before he responds, at 14'55'' into the first movement), but the Andante con moto’s first solo entry is extraordinarily beautiful.
For me, however, the electrically-recorded solo performances are infinitely more interesting, especially the Tempest Sonata, with its playful closing Allegretto. Rubato is legion throughout, most notably in the Waldstein’s first movement and the Appassionata’s finale. Lamond habitually leans, accelerates, accentuates, splits chords and eases the pace when the going gets tough. His Op. 110 has nothing of Schnabel’s intellectual grasp and even less of Fischer’s spirituality; in fact, from the Adagio and beyond, he sounds quite at sea. And yet his quasi-improvisatory approach to, say, the first movements of the Pathetique and Appassionata Sonatas eschews any hint of clinical calculation: one might not agree, but one invariably senses the reasoning behind the phrasing. Repeats are virtually non-existent, most conspicuously in the first-movement variations of Op. 26. In terms of sound, however, things go very well, save for a couple of conspicuous side joins (in the first movements of Op. 26 and the Emperor Concerto).
For me, there is something refreshingly unpretentious about Lamond’s Beethoven, a sort of ‘rough justice’, if you like, that sidesteps artifice or cerebral posturing and giv es us an honest verdict, one that comes straight from the heart. Jonathan Summers offers expert annotation.'