Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas, Vol. 2

Album review

A Russian pianist established in Zurich where he also teaches, Konstantin Scherbakov has recorded around forty CDs for the label Naxos who have taken him on since 1992. Several recordings have been critically acclaimed, especially the Douze Études d’exécution transcendante by Liapounov, a sort of Russian response to the cycle of the same name by Franz Liszt which became a veritable revelation.
After recording Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s nine Symphonies, Scherbakov threw himself into the recording of the 32 Sonatas for piano by Beethoven for the label Steinway & Sons, founded in 2010.

Recorded in chronological order, this new collection is only at its beginning, and this second volume is dedicated to Sonatas n° 4, 5 and 6. Composed in 1796 with vast proportions, the Sonata Op. 7 interestingly pre-empts the large compositions of the last Beethoven with a solid but sometimes authoritative style that deliberately distances itself from Mozart and the language of Haydn (a young Beethoven’s professor). According to his contemporaries, the sonata was composed in an impassioned state of mind and quickly earned the nickname of the “Amorous” by the Viennese public. Scherbakov portrays a solidly romantic vision of it.
The two pieces that follow are part of three Sonatas, Op. 10 that were published in 1798. In the Finale of the Sonata in C minor, Beethoven already uses a shape that he would go on to use again seven years later, in the same key, at the start of his Fifth Symphony. © François Hudry/Qobuz