Classical reviews: Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak

Beethoven Piano Sonatas Vol 9, Nos 7, 18, 32

Jonathan Biss, piano

(Orchid ORC100109)

★★★★★

One of the many professional casualties of the lockdown was the pianist Jonathan Biss, whose Beethoven series at the Wigmore Hall skidded to a halt. But he’s very much around on CD: this record brings his complete recorded Beethoven cycle to a triumphant conclusion. Having devoted most of his energies to Beethoven over the last ten years – writing and talking as much as playing – he’s carved out a niche as a leading interpreter of the sonatas, so it’s no surprise that his liner notes to this record should be illuminating. The sonatas he’s chosen to juxtapose are each the last of a set of three; each, he argues, represents a culmination, and through the questions they raise, they reflect the composer’s vulnerability as much as his strength.

His analysis of Opus 111 is both provocative and persuasive. Discussing what he regards as its inability to end, he suggests that its subtext is both the desire to live forever, and the impossibility of doing so, with its final bars representing “a heartbeat that simply stops”. The achievement of this performance – smooth and exquisitely expressive when it soars into the empyrean – is to convey exactly that.

Sandra Lied Haga – Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations, original version; Dvorak: Cello Concerto

Sandra Lied Haga, cello; State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia “Evgeny Svetlanov” conducted by Terje Mikkelsen

(Simax PSC 1363)

★★★★★

There is a new contender in the world of the cello: a 25-year-old Norwegian called Sandra Lied Haga. She started on the cello at three – dwarfed by her instrument – but swiftly rose to prominence, winning competition after competition, and charming everyone with her sound. She made her Wigmore debut aged twelve, and her Verbier debut soon after; her chamber partners have included Janine Jansen, Leif Ove Andsnes, Yo-Yo Ma, and Anne-Sophie Mutter.

The two works on this new CD allow her ample scope to deploy her warm and passionate sound. One of Tchaikovsky’s biographers aptly said of his Rococo Variations that the work represents “a world of order and calm in beautifully-wrought music, as gracious and as light as any 18th-century divertimento” – for it does indeed reflect Tchaikovsky’s desire to hark back to the time of the Enlightenment. Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, written during his sojourn in New York, is another heart-warming work.