Classical CDs: Mexican brass, fairy gardens and a socially distanced orchestral recording | reviews, news & interviews
Classical CDs: Mexican brass, fairy gardens and a socially distanced orchestral recording
Classical CDs: Mexican brass, fairy gardens and a socially distanced orchestral recording
Hefty piano sonatas, a joyous symphony and a semi-improvised epic from an inventive trumpeter
by Graham RicksonSaturday, 08 May 2021
Boris Giltburg (Naxos)
It's worth noting that Beethoven's final piano sonatas weren't his last works; there was still a lot of music in him. Performing them as weighty, epic closing statements can smother the sonatas’ inventiveness, so it’s good to hear Boris Giltburg emphasising Beethoven’s charm and invention. He doesn’t undersell the gravitas, but lightness and energy are what draw us in. Reach the understated close of No. 32’s “Arietta” and there’s a feeling of frustration that we’ve hit the end. Giltburg is excellent at sustaining Beethoven’s longer structures, and that individual movements were recorded in single takes surely contributes to this. The same sonata’s variation sequence builds with pleasing inevitability, the coda serene and untroubled.