Gilels: Beethoven "Hammerklavier" Sonata - DG 410 527-1 (DDD)

$

25

ITEM DESCRIPTION:

This beautiful and now quite rare late-issue LP from Deutsche Grammophon (410 527-1, German pressing, DDD stereo) features legendary pianist Emil Gilel's towering and haunting account of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major Op. 106 “Hammerklavier”, recorded in the rich acoustics of Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin in October 1982, a trule gramophone classic.

Wrote the eminent critic Richard Osborne in his review for the December 1983 issue of The Gramophone:

"Few works of music stimulate active and stressful thinking—anxious thought complementing the music's search for resolvable sounds—than the Hammerklavier. Nor is it a work which is easily mastered physically. (Pollini, on DG, strikes me as being too obviously masterful; Brendel, on Philips, less so.) Of all pianists, Schnabel (on his 1935 HMV recording) perhaps comes closest to conveying a reckless, all-or-nothing mood, allied to a terrier-like grasp of argument and a sure instinct for the work's persistent striving for release into uninhibited song. Yet there are scrambles and mistakes in his performance which were avoided, with minimal loss to the music's headlong impetus, in the famous 1956 Solomon recording, whose absence from the catalogue is much to be regretted (HMV mono XLP50I 16, 9/ 69—nla). Like Solomon, Gilels gives us an Outstanding reading of the vast slow movement. The tempo is spacious, apt to Gilels's mastery of the music's anisometric lines and huge paragraphs, paragraphs as big as an East Anglian sky. Few pianists since Solomon have come near to matching Gilels's ability to touch off the rapt, disburdened beauty of these lofty Beethoventan cantilenas.

"The search for lyric release is something which Gilels seems particularly to stress. The of the finale's D major subject, Tovey s "Still, Small Voice" after the Fire, is here a moment that is specially cherishable, the more so as the fugue and the subsequent aggressive peroration are played by Gilds with a directness and lucidity which contrasts interestingly with his sophisticated and equivocal treatment of the opening Allegro movement. There, we have a sense of impetus and attack (Gilels's sheer pianistic command compensating for a tempo 42 minims a minute below Beethoven's startling and plausible minim= 138) though when we reach the gracious second subject in G, rhythmic motion is not so much suspended as upstaged by the first intimations of the music's surprising capacity for feminine songfulness.

"The Scherzo, as befits its character, is also equivocal; the playing of the Trio and the dance's quietly elaborated reprise is a rare treat for the ear, though the tempo seems slow for so obviously ironic a piece. It takes a major pianist standing outside the Viennese tradition to see the volatile and ageing Beethoven subsuming gamesome Classical ironies in Romantic pathos and a feeling of personal travail.

"There is, though, nothing effete about the totality of Gilels's reading. Formidably in command of the music, he neither subjects the notes to his virtuosic will, nor demeans his own technique by mimetic attempts at audible disorder. Disturbingly aware, in the first movement, of what he suggests are unstable fancies informing the work's manic oscillations, Gilds proceeds to achieve a troubled coherence in the brilliantly executed coda of the finale where his extraordinary technique allows the music's evident ferocity to be tempered by Orphic assurance.

"It is, in fine, an absorbing and ambiguous reading. At times it is a model of lucidity, arguments and textures appearing as the mechanism of a fine Swiss watch must do to a craftsman's glass; yet the reading is also full of subversive beauty, the finely elucidated tonal shifts confirming Charles Rosen's assertion that Beethoven's art, for all its turbulence, is here as sensuous as a Schubert song.

"The recording is limpid and resolute, with something of the character and atmosphere of Wilhelm Kempff's celebrated recordings of this endlessly challenging, endlessly fascinating work."

CONDITION:

The gradations of condition I use are as follows: MINT, Near-Mint, Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor.

The condition of the jacket is GOOD. There is edgewear, bumping at corners, and creasing. However, there are no seamsplits, bends, owners’ markings, or other defects, and the whole remains solid, bright, glossy, and highly attractive – overall, this is a good collector's copy.

The condition of the LP itself is near-MINT. Although surfaces are not absolutely silent (and thus I have rated it NM vs. MINT), really this is a very fine copy and playback is truly superb. However, if you must have absolutely perfect surfaces, then please do not buy this LP. Overall, this rates as a very fine collector's copy.