日本钢琴大师内田光子演奏的贝多芬钢琴奏鸣曲第二十八号,二十九号。
Artistic Quality: 8
Sound Quality: 10
You might imagine how well the textural transparency and carefully gauged inner voices in the first movement of Beethoven’s Op. 101 sonata would sound via string quartet. However, Mitsuko Uchida’s massive, deliberate treatment suggests the heft and resonance of a chamber orchestra. The second-movement march’s unwieldy trills and skips don’t faze Uchida’s marksmanship at all. But her inconsistent rhythmic spring in the dotted rhythms plays down the music’s obsessive stride, and she pulls the Trio’s tempo back to slightly arch effect. Aside from moments when Uchida lapses into her “my short, soft detached chords are shorter and softer than yours” bag, the pianist triumphs in the knotty finale, shaping the conversational, fast moving counterpoint with breathtaking clarity and ease.
Like Arrau and Serkin, Uchida takes Beethoven’s overly optimistic metronome marking for the Hammerklavier’s first movement with a grain of salt, while serving up comparable intensity and polyphonic acumen, helped by one of the most potent left hands in the business. Uchida’s emphasis of the repeated notes and multi-hued voicings make the Scherzo’s enigmatic trio sound more three-dimensional than we usually hear, although she underplays this section’s climactic scales and laughing tremolo chords.
At nearly 20 minutes, the Adagio Sostenuto counts among this movement’s most expansive and cohesive readings on disc. Uchida’s judiciously proportioned rubatos never bog down, the elaborately lyrical phrases peak and ebb naturally, and the stark, exposed sections are meticulously calibrated and timed for maximum eloquence. In the last movement Uchida doesn’t allow the trills leading out of the Largo into the Fugue their transitional due (they sound tacked on, rather than emerging from the previous music), and her slowing down the basic tempo for the fugue’s lyrical D major theme in quarter notes belabors the obvious mood change. I also contend that Uchida’s ritard on the second-to-last pair of chords pulls focus from the final cadence’s decisive last word. Quibbles aside, you cannot help but respect this pianist’s insight, concentration, and sheer finger power. Fine annotations, superb sonics.
-- Jed Distler