Bridge 9262, 69:15 [Distrib. by Albany] ****:
Originally issued on the Arabesque label, these inscriptions for Garrick Ohlsson’s Beethoven cycle date from 18-20 August 1998, at the Recital Hall of the Purchase Conservatory of Music in Purchase, New York. The two sonatas in question could not be more opposed aesthetically, the Hammerklavier of 1819 written to approximate the titanic, symphonic scale of the large symphonies like the Eroica; the G Major (1802) composed as a series of musical jokes and puns, wildly compressed experiments in shifting accents and audacious modulations.
Having just reviewed Garrick Ohlsson in recital at the Herbst Theatre, San Francisco in music by Scriabin and Prokofiev, I can well attest to the power of his huge hands to wrestle with mammoth digital challenges. The Hammerklavier evolves as tailor-made for Ohlsson’s dynamic and expressive gifts, the expanded sense of scale alternating with molecular increments of even the smallest motifs (often based on the interval of a third). The innate storm and stress of the first movement’s development–its fanfares and opposing, intimate episodes–all the consummate keyboard technique here appears harnessed to the natural presentation of heroic ideas. Wit and piercing accuracy mark the Scherzo, only to yield to that extraordinary Adagio sostenuto – an agonized meditation on the ills of a troubled planet. If providing a flowing metrical unit to the Adagio were not daunting enough, the final movement’s fugue–or double fugue, to be exact–requires about six more fingers than even Ohlsson possesses. Still, the Herculean effort manages to conceal itself in the layered fluidity of motion, the inverted counterpoint and cross-rhythms in harmonized control. As hearty and heartfelt a reading as I have heard from Ohlsson in this series, especially for a pianist who rather prides himself on aesthetic distance in his interpretations.
I like the brisk, irreverent tone Ohlsson brings to the G Major, even if my personal favorites remain Serkin and Backhaus for this jaunty, happy excursion into musical knots for their own sake. The music deliberately seeks to undermine the pianist’s hand co-ordination, a counterpart to Mozart’s A Musical Joke. Interrupted pulsations, metric jarrings, and wrong-key progressions hound this piece in rustic revelry. Only the theme-and-variations Andante has any “real class,” as it were, and it allows Ohlsson to demonstrate some jeu de perle we do not often receive from his aggressive style. The last movement Allegretto proves a vivacious rondo that withholds its series of wickedly spiteful tempo alterations until the final pages. Virtuosic music performed by a genuine virtuoso, at the very least. Sound and engineering by Adam Abeshouse are top flight.
— Gary Lemco
