Search - Ludwig van Beethoven, Jenö Jandó :: Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 7

Underestimated Sonatas

Leslie Richford | Selsingen, Lower Saxony | 12/03/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This seventh volume of Jenö Jandó?s complete recording of Beethoven?s Piano Sonatas contains three of the longer sonatas that Beethoven wrote around the turn of the century (from the 18th to the 19th), each being about 20 minutes long. Probably the best-known of them is No. 12 because of the third movement, the ?Funeral March on the Death of a Hero?, which immediately awakes associations with the Eroica Symphony and was, in fact, played at Beethoven?s funeral. But Nos. 16 and 18 should not be neglected: although they are, obviously, not as exciting or innovative as some of the great later sonatas (?Waldstein?, ?Appassionata?), they bear testimony both to Beethoven?s virtuosity and his inventive spirit and are well worth being listened to over and over again. Which is something I have done with this Naxos CD without ever feeling that I needed a better, more expensive recording, so I guess the quality here must be pretty good. (The microphones appear to have been placed just a fraction further from the piano than on some of the earlier volumes in the series, which reduces the amount of mechanical and other noise ? including Jandó?s humming, which can only be heard here very occasionally ? and makes for rather more pleasant listening.) So why not five stars instead of four? Well, the liner notes by Keith Anderson are, in the main, just a repeat of the biographical notes in all the other volumes, there is next to no information about the music itself, which is a pity, because I think these lovely sonatas are often underestimated and could bear being described and analysed in much more detail."