BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 “Moonlight”; Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13 “Pathetique”; Piano Sonata in No. 25 in G Major, Op. 79; Piano Sonata No. 23 in C Major, Op. 53 “Waldstein” – Steven Osborne, piano – Hyperion CDA67662, 70:52 [Distr. by Harmonia mundi] ****:
Recorded in Henry Wood Hall, London, 13-15 September 2008, these Beethoven sonatas cover familiar ground, enlightening us as to the expressive delicacies and explosive prowess of Steven Osborne. The 1801 Moonlight Sonata Osborne performs as it is meant to convey its “quasi fantasia” designation, in which an inevitable blurring of the arpeggiated line occurs. The second movement lightly exemplifies a deft non-legato. For the tempests of the Presto agitato, Osborne brings a fluid series of transitions and imperious attacks on diminished sevenths, his trills and runs fluid and beset by hammer stroke sforzati. Mr. Osborne’s Steinway, captured by Simon Eadon, resounds with imperious authority.
The C Minor Sonata (1799) of Beethoven has had innumerable ripple effects in music, among them in Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony and in Wagner’s own Tristan Prelude. Osborne fills the Grave with haunted anticipation of later evolutions, the drum roll extending into the Allegro di molto e con brio. The tensions soon resolve into a dualism of chromatic agony and diatonic repose – passion versus will. Osborne takes the first movement repeat and so broadens the horizons of the Manichean struggle. The resurgence of the Grave motif seems to impress implacably the hand of fate upon the urgency of this agonistic world view. No affectation enters the realm of the Adagio cantabile, its interior voice rocking prismatically in search of spiritual consolation, achieved perhaps best in the middle section, in which a touch of the heroic asserts itself. J.W.N. Sullivan defined “genius” as the capacity for “recoverable contexts,” and Beethoven assumes the A-flat sensibility to serve the central canonic episode of the Rondo finale, itself derived from earlier motives. Osborne does not aggressively insist on the poised and chiseled series of balanced figures that constitute this deftly conceived movement.
The 1810 G Major Sonata bears a designation of “Sonata facile,” but its bravura–expressly marked in the “German style”–appealed greatly to Dame Myra Hess, who relished its iconoclastic asymmetries and often thrilling zesty energies. No less impressive is Beethoven’s compressive powers, the mastery of which attend this sonata’s near relatives: Op. 78 and Op. 95. The more playful fioritura infiltrates the writing in the Op. 80 Choral-Fantasy. The second movement plays as a minor key barcarolle, almost a Schubertian invention. The rondo has the playfulness of a village band, its acciaccaturas as deft as its middle section’s crossed-hand cuckoo effects. Osborne negotiates Beethoven’s breezy thoughts with a learned finesse, never pedantic for its stylistic acumen.
Finally, the massive 1805 Op. 53 Sonata in C, whose opening toccata effects call forth a foil in a chorale theme in a radiant E Major. The ensuing tension between bravura and expressive elements, the note G itself having been liberated as an extension of the low C in the bass. The Aeolian harp effects and effective pedaling become quite colossal and imply a resonance that transcends even the G Major Concerto. The coda itself ushers in pianissimo glissandi in octaves for two hands in contrary motion. The chorale theme urges itself upon us once more before a mighty three-pronged fanfare utters a strict goodnight. Osborne intones the hazy world of the Adagio molto as a tension-ridden preparation for the colorful world of the Rondo, a symphonic application of keyboard techniques in oceanic harmony. The transparency as well as solidity of the performance resonates with an authority we might have ascribed to Rudolf Serkin, the iron paw padded by beguiling hues of velvet.
–Gary Lemco
