Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas

My musical soul has been largely created in response to improvised music. I grew up listening to lots of classical but as a teen and adult I have been largely drawn to the broad spectrum of creative improvised musics: blues, jazz and various world musics.Recently, I started to listen to a teaching company course on the Sonatas of Beethoven and stopped until I became more familiar with the music. I then entered a shadow war of opinion on who has performed the best Sonata cycle and ended up purchasing the Lewis because of what I had read.In the final analysis, such arguments about the quality of different pianists performing the sonatas is like arguments about translations of Homer or Dostoevsky. Largely silly. Homer, Dostoevsky and Beethoven either speak to you or they don't. Look for the version that resonates with your experience the most and let learned opinion be damned.Having said that, Lewis strikes me as a superb choice. This is a version that is done with great care. The recording has great clarity which seems to me to be essential for an appreciation of how Lewis plays. I believe I can hear how carefully he has thought about these pieces. He seems to emphasize individual notes or chords within a storm of notes or in those incredibly rapid little phrases this music offers to abundance. Lewis seems to have the ability to independently play each finger in terms of the overall dynamics of the music.The dynamics is one of the ways in which I think that Beethoven was probably revolutionary. Composers prior to him seem so limited in comparison. He thunders, he whispers, he rages, he caresses the piano. One of the points in the Teaching Company course was that Beethoven's playing inspired a revolution in the making of pianos. He literally beat the pianos of his time to death in playing his music. I am fairly sure that not a few fell victim to some of the sonatas.And then there are the musical ideas. This is where my review title comes in. Beethoven is obviously very very different than either Art Tatum or Cecil Taylor. But they all share the quality of almost having too much to say, they think too fast, they are already creating the next phrase as they play the current one.Beethoven was a noted improvisor and for anyone who has listened to a lot of improvisatory music (me, me!), that is obvious from the sonatas.I hear a phrase, then a variation with some grace notes, then a change of rhythm, then that leads to a new phrase and then back with new harmony and then on to the next idea. I am not suggesting that the sonatas were not carefully thought out, I am suggesting that their raw materials come out of Beethoven's improvisatory experience.In any case, if you have any curiosity about Beethoven and the sonatas, I can heartily recommend Lewis as your point of entry. These are works of great beauty and intelligence and soul. As I listen to them, I realized they are the fertile ground on which much of the piano music that came later was drawn from. If your taste in music runs the gamut from Chopin to Cecil Taylor, from Tatum to Scriabin, then you are in for a treat. My thanks to Paul Lewis for edumucating me.

I'm used to these sonatas. These performances are among the slowest in tempo, which can be misleading.But the sluggish pace allows Mr. Lewis to work out wonderful details, without loosing the overall dynamics

Very intense, forward, impressive playing here. I'm now officially swamped by Beethoven piano sonata sets and individual albums by so many great names that it seems premature of me to say Lewis belongs among them. What if we just compare him to what I was listening to earlier today while sitting here slaving away on various writing projects, with my really fine vintage hifi pouring the sounds of Beethoven into my ears? That was Pollini. There's decidedly more drama here. You know, maybe one of the earlier reviewers is right. What really sells this box set is the great Harmonia Mundi recording. It captures Lewis's fluid tone very nicely. And yes, he is intense. I feel like he's often about to teeter over into bombast--oh no, it's That Beethoven!--but then hangs back. Lewis does have a sense of how to deploy the drama, the underlying unease, the bursts of sunlight and starlight. Oh come on, you've got to like this. Is it the "one Beethoven to have if you're having only one?" I doubt that. I don't think I'd pick it over Pollini, or over Gulda (no matter which versions), but I think many would be very happy with this as their only traversal. To these uneducated ears it has the "ring of truth." Yes, and very important: Lewis's performances are entertaining. Did we forget that? Once upon a time, Beethoven was Big Entertainment, and Lewis seems to know it.

Those who criticise this pianist are wrong; he's a worthy successor to Brendel. Thing is, it's about time: none of us can go back to when there was no Beethoven, or understand the musical ground from which he sprang. Hell, people, we've heard of, or even been at the John Cage concert where he walks to the piano in concert garb, sits before the keyboard motionless, and after a while gets up without playing a note and walks off: an elegant epitaph on classical music; but merely elegant. We fall back on various historical traditions of who Beethoven was, and what he did, and similar cartoons We've maybe actually heard Sonny Rollins (great!), and Aaron Copland (not so great); but classical music before us completed its magnificent arc; and we're spoiled by what we think is our understanding of it. But it's ETERNAL! Deal with that. It can be reinterpreted forever, both with and without knowing how Schnabel did it. Mr Lewis is one in a noble line that will outlast any and all of us. But he is of our era.

All Beethoven's piano sonatas never better or more sensitively, accurately, beautifully, harmoniously, clearly, or luminously played

This complete set fully deserves the excellent reviews it received. There are many other complete sets but I can't imagine a better one.

I will not attempt to compare Paul Lewis’s interpretations with those of older great masters, the likes of Gilels, Richter, or Barenboim. Any of that group, just to pick personal favorites, has given us performances to treasure. I will leave it to others to analyze relative strengths and weaknesses. All I will say is that no one has given me more listening pleasure than Lewis.This is a set of performances where, over repeated listening, I have not heard one single page where Lewis does not bring out the beauty of Beethoven’s creation. He presents that magical world with sensitivity, musicality, maturity, clarity, technical mastery, and an unerring sense of when and how to allow the forceful giant to come through, the gentle poet to enchant, or the suffering human to cry.A special mention of the Opus 111: I confess that whenever I am about to hear a new (to me) recording of Beethoven’s last sonata, it is always with a sense of anticipation, but also with a fear of disappointment. Many otherwise great performers have failed to play the Arietta quite as the sublime expression of humanness that it is. Paul Lewis has not: his interpretation is beyond beautiful.NB: I acquired these recordings a few at a time, as they were being published over a few years sometime around 2007 (?), and those are the basis for my review. I assume that the complete set now being offered is made up of those same recordings.

Die geschmackvoll gestaltete 10-CD-Box mit individuellen bedruckten CD-Taschen und einem recht umfangreichen und zudem lesenswerten Booklet machen wirklich Eindruck. Auch klanglich sind diese Aufnahmen vorbildlich, das Instrument ist präsent und doch gut in den Raumklang eingebettet. Unter diesen geradezu idealen Bedingungen stellt Paul Lewis seine Sichtweise Beethovenscher Sonaten vor.Dabei 'verspielt' der britische Pianist allerdings die Musik, nicht im technischem, aber im darstellerischen Sinn. Sein Anschlag ist durchsichtig, präzise und klangschön, die Tempi der schnellen Sätze sind eher ruhig gehalten und es wird reichlich Gebrauch vom rechten Pedal gemacht, was an sich kein Stein des Anstoßes sein muss. Verzweifeln kann man hingegen über die gar so zärtlichen, rosaroten Interpretationen, die zwar ohne Rubati auskommt, aber darüber hinaus alle Ecken und Kanten der Musik abrundet und aufpoliert. Damit rückt er Beethoven aus seinem Kontext und macht aus den Sonaten romantische Charakterstücke.Ein Beispiel dafür ist das "Vivace alla marcia" aus op. 101: So einen seltsam sinnlichen 'Marsch' haben Sie wahrscheinlich noch nie gehört! Wie in Ballettschuhen und Tutu auf dem Exerzierplatz wirkt das. Ähnlich samtweich gebettet wird der namenlose Held des Trauermarsches in op. 26 zu Grabe getragen. Zuckersüß wie ein romantisches Nocturne tupft er den Kopfsatz von op. 14/1 hin - hübsch, aber harmlos. Und so geht es weiter.Lewis bemüht sich redlich um seinen eigenen, persönlichen Zugang und bleibt sich in seiner Grundhaltung auch treu. Unmusikalisch wirken seine Interpretationen natürlich nicht. Doch offensichtlich hat er es versäumt Stil und Persönlichkeit Beethovens zu reflektieren, anders ist nicht zu erklären, warum Lewis die Entschlossenheit dieser Musik ausbremst, die gliedernde Schärfe ignoriert, die elementare Dramatik weichspült und die Sonaten damit - sicherlich unabsichtlich - verharmlost. Denn ohne Zweifel liebt Lewis die Beethoven-Sonaten, auf eine unverhohlen zärtliche Weise eben. Dank seiner formidalblen Technik und seiner Hingabe ist dies sicher keine schlechte Version der 32 Beethoven-Sonaten. Aber eine Verneigung vor dem Komponisten ist diese Gesamtaufnahme auch nicht.

Voici une magnifique intégrale des sonates de beethoven, elle est complémentaire de celles de brendel derniére édition, mais pour moi elle surpasse l'intégrale de kovacevich qui est souvent citée en référence. Prise de son Magnifique.