Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 35 "Funeral March" - Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29, Op. 106 "Hammerklavier"

Album review

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106 ("Hammerklavier"), and Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 35 ("Funeral March"), are both recorded with great frequency, although rarely, if ever, on the same album. The pairing may have been one factor that put this release by pianist Beatrice Rana on classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2024, and another may well have been this young pianist's undoubted charisma. Rana is inventive in finding a thread that connects the two works. Both pieces are technically difficult, the Beethoven especially so, and pianists have responded with heroic, monumental frameworks and fireworks. Rana does something different. Her slow movement in the Beethoven is very tender, deliberate but not ponderous, with a sense of tragedy to match the Chopin Funeral March. In general, she tends toward detail rather than thundering piano, and there are many fresh insights in her interpretation. Her outer movements in the Chopin have a skittery quality, as if the tragedy marked by the Funeral March has created a sense of dissociation. In the Beethoven, she teases out contrapuntal lines that are obscured by blazing readings, bringing her fugal finale closer to the variation finales of the Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109, and Piano Sonata No. 32 in C major, Op. 111, in mood. It is a fresh album from an artist who has thus far offered less imposing fare, and it is well recorded at the Parco della Musica Auditorium in Rome.

© James Manheim /TiVo