Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op. 106 Hammerklavier; Piano Sonata Op. 2, No. 3. Marc-André Hamelin, piano. Hyperion CDA68456. Total time: 68:59.
DIGITAL REVIEW — Fun fact: This coupling of the Piano Sonatas Op. 2, No. 3 and Op. 106 is Marc-André Hamelin’s first Beethoven release. The delay is remarkable given a recording career that began in 1988 and includes Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert, as well as such outré figures as Alkan, Godowsky, Kapustin, and Roslavets.
Of course, the Hyperion label, for which Hamelin records exclusively, has another pianist on its roster, Angela Hewitt, who finished a survey of Beethoven sonatas in 2022. One can understand a reluctance to issue two Canadians in competition, however complementary they might be.
Hamelin’s relations with Op. 106, the grand and notoriously difficult Hammerklavier, are complicated. The pianist uncorked it in his home town of Montreal in 1993, when he was a lad of 31. “The performance brandished many technical strengths while leaving room for interpretive growth,” I opined in a deadline review for the Montreal Gazette.
It is possible that Hamelin agreed, for the piece disappeared from his repertoire for almost 30 years. This recording, made in September 2023 in the Church of St. Silas the Martyr in London, reflects the authoritative perspective of a sexagenarian.
With, it must be stressed, no loss of youthful vitality. Observing Beethoven’s fast metronome marking in spirit if not in fact, Hamelin chooses a suitably propulsive pace for the first movement that permits nuances of color and line to register meaningfully without compromising forward momentum.
Hewitt adds more than a minute to Hamelin’s first-movement timing of 10:56, in part to accommodate an array of expressive stretches that might fairly (and without sarcasm) be called Chopinesque. She also treats the opening eighth note in the bass frankly as a quarter note — possibly as a consequence of using her left hand alone to make the leap (which is to say, abiding by the score as printed).
Hamelin (who admits to using both hands) is quicker, crisper, and, to my ears, more convincingly Beethovenian. Not that expressive license is absent. The fortissimo B-minor statement of the main theme in the recapitulation is taken deliberately — a defensible choice in spite of Beethoven’s a tempo indication. The half-bar alterations of loud and soft in the coda are animated by percussive force. And why not? This work is, as the first edition explicitly indicates, a sonata written “für das Hammerklavier.”
It is also a landmark in the history of counterpoint owing to the prodigious fugue with which it concludes. Both artists are formidable contrapuntalists (Hewitt acclaimed above all for her Bach), and there is little to choose between them where horizontal clarity is concerned. They differ, however, in interpretive outlook, Hewitt finding humor and bonhomie in the scampering lines while Hamelin stresses their fearsomeness. As I put it in an April 2022 review of a Hamelin recital in Toronto: One had the sense of a ringmaster controlling tigers that could escape at any moment.
Of course, there are many other Hammerklaviers to be considered, including some online. I appreciate the emphatic character of Valentina Lisitsa’s Scherzo in her YouTube account (which has attracted more than half a million views). Hamelin treats this movement as an easygoing stroll, the better to underline the windswept turbulence of the trio.
For many, the heart of the Hammerklavier is the Adagio sostenuto, one of the greatest of all slow movements, solo, chamber, or orchestral. Hamelin captures the operatic quality of the richly ornamented top line but also finds things to sing about in the middle and lower registers. The tempo is giusto, and it is probably the impatience of a veteran critic with merely very good playing that explains my greater fascination with the extreme prolongation of Christoph Eschenbach (who took 25:17 to finish the movement in 1971) and the striking forward motion of Friedrich Gulda (13:44 in 1968). Hewitt and Hamelin offer the saner durations of 17:32 and 18:40, respectively.
The Sonata Op. 2, No. 3 is no mere filler as Hamelin plays it. There are points of comparison between this trio and its Op. 106 successor. Virtuoso elements (which for me include the hard-to-articulate ornament in thirds of the first bar) are impressively dispatched but also made musical sense of. With its impassioned Adagio, this 18th-century sonata sounds grandly of the 19th. Possibly this conviction led Hamelin to omit the first-movement repeat.
Lucid booklet notes by the veteran Beethoven authority Barry Cooper add to the appeal of this well-recorded release. If you want only one Hammerklavier, this will do nicely. There are, however, dozens to choose from, some heroic, some impetuous, some eccentric, some stable. A case can be made even for the technically iffy efforts of Artur Schnabel in 1935 as a valid artistic reflection of the difficulty of the music, especially when a pianist opts for tempos approaching the metronome markings Beethoven left us.
A score as great as the Hammerklavier will admit a variety of approaches. And for this we must be glad.
