Customer Reviews

Serkin Unreleased Studio Recordings- Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1, 6, 12, 13, 16, 21, 30, 31, 32; Opp. 2/1,10/2,26,27/1,31/1,53,109-111

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Most of Serkin's recorded output was chamber music and concertos. Why so little solo work, particularly Beethoven sonatas? Now we know -- he consistently, year after year, vetoed his own recordings. But praise be, after his father's death Peter Serkin was given the final say regarding the issue of these 9 sonatas. I have all Serkin's currently available recordings, and the only duplication is op110, and that is a puzzle to me, because this performance strikes me as far better (the recorded sound could have a lot to do with this) than the one he did pass for issue. Indeed it is one of the greatest and most perfect Beethoven sonata readings I have ever heard. Or I think so -- he must have preferred the other one, so what am I missing?

The recordings date from 1960 (op110) to 1980 (op27#1). Over that period Serkin's style of playing underwent a change. The peculiar electricity of his earlier style, the pent-up energy held just in check by the fierce intellectual discipline, the occasional thrilling whiff of danger in the air -- all this is less marked in his later years. We know that he 'shuddered' at some of his earlier recordings. Thank goodness he just recorded them and left the shuddering for later. And there are compensations too. From start to finish in all these 9 works there is not a single fluff, let alone wrong note. The technique remained superb -- the finales of op2#1 and op10#2 are notable. Serkin retained his evenness of touch into old age better than many (e.g. Horowitz), and seemed concerned with aspects of tone-colour that had not interested him when younger. The first movement of op27#1
is simply gorgeous. The tone-production reminded me oddly of one of the several styles of Richter -- the Richter of Schubert's smaller A major sonata and the Wanderer Fantasy. Op27#1 and op31#1 are two of the least played and least regarded of the Beethoven set. Forget all that: Serkin makes them as interesting as the Appassionata. The prophetic feel of Serkin's Beethoven is everywhere here. He is consistently illuminating as nobody else is, to my mind.

Not everything is guaranteed to be to your taste. Is there possibly too much pedal in the opening vivace of op109? Again, in the Funeral March sonata he sounds a little severe compared with Michelangeli and -- especially -- Richter. Richter takes the variations at a variety of speeds and races through the finale. I just love his performance, but it's worth remembering that Tovey discourages this way of handling the variations, and better scholars than I am may have insights into whether the moderate speeds favoured by Michelangeli and even more so Serkin in the finale are moderate for some special reason. And to think we almost lost this monumental op111!

The booklet suggests that there was an earlier version of the Waldstein. I would sell my soul to get hold of that, fine though this one is. One curious point -- all his career Serkin (like Backhaus, Horowitz and Michelangeli) favoured the device of 'left-hand down'. It is oddly absent from these 3 discs, and that is a particularly striking difference between this op110 and
the later one that he agreed to let out. I thought political correctness had killed the style off, but I am delighted to find it revived for the new generation by Zacharias.

Well, now we have the Missing Beethoven Sonatas. What else was he suppressing and how can we get hold of it?

The figure and transcendence of Rudolf Serkin still have not been calibrated in its fair essence. His mesmerizing approach to Beethoven was loaded of a spiritual rapport, an accurate blend of urgency and noblesse, tragedy and epic, fierceness and grandness. He never played just a single mellow bar in any Beethoven work. To play Beethoven goes far beyond a simple finnancial contract, his legacy overpowers and overpasses the limits of the Hall Concert. And Serkin knew to emphasize the bitter and dark dissonances in Beethoven such a few pianists have been able to make it.

Honesty, conviction, commitment, tune, musicality, expression and temperament. All of those qualities are indeed, hard to find in just one pianist.

But Serkin was one of those few. So try to get all what you can from this legendary artist who found in Beethoven the perfect attachment with the cosmos, achieving with this composer artistic heights that he never achieved with no other composer.

An additional advise: thanks to the goodwill of a friend, he lent me a very hard to find CD of a London Recital 1971 ; the label is ARKADIA and its code is CDGI 911.1 . So if you can get in some hidden store do not think it twice. It is a colossal treasure.

Wonderful music, played forthrightly and, of course, technically impeccably. If you love the Beethoven sonatas, you will be transported by these recordings.

RS's performance of the 31st sonata is simply breathtaking--you owe it to yourself to hear it. Listen out for the triple pianissimo at the end of the Arietta. As I wrote somewhere else, prepare yourself to be dragged through three world wars, before you reach an unsettled conclusion. Seriously, though, this is the definitive version.