<<  -- 5 --  Bill Newman    TETE-A-TETE

'Record companies are very much aware of what their opposite numbers are doing, so it is not wise to clash with the same repertoire, but to feature these rarities in recital has to be a good thing. Inevitably we are governed by the great Viennese Classics and the recognised Masterworks, and it is extremely dangerous to make cases for second, or even third rate music, when it is clearly not. Some artists elevate a composer's music out of all proportion to its worth, but I try to discriminate very carefully between the repertoire I perform.' It is also important that instrumentalists perform music they are best suited to. I recently questioned an artist manager for permitting one of their youngsters, who had made an excellent early impression in a group of South American composers' works, following up with some mediocre performances of Beethoven and Chopin. Regulars in the Wigmore Hall audience tend to lose their concentration when this occurs. Why couldn't we have had more Villa-Lobos, Guarnieri and Ginastera, instead.

'One of the best of the younger interpreters of Beethoven and Schubert is Paul Lewis'. Although, like Alfred Brendel his teacher -- yourself and Ciccolini, also -- he omits the first movement repeat from Schubert's last B flat Sonata. This is mostly due to the lengthy time span, but in recording I think one has to value the composer's request and make the repeat -- prefaced by that marvellous bridge passage -- while making added subtleties second time round. The great works as a whole should be re-examined to decide whether the architecture is harmed by leaving repeats out. One young player omitted every single one from Mozart's Sonata K333 recently, and it sounded ridiculous, but I think he was phased by the other big works he still had to perform -- a Beethoven Sonata, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit and Stravinsky's Petrushka. 'I value what you say, but when pianists are devoted to a composer and his music they should do their utmost to perform it as well as possible in the real spirit intended.'

The real bête noir of late Beethoven Sonatas is his Hammerklavier, where the composer's fast metronome indications cause a clash of opinions. François Fréderic Guy's performance and recording at very fast speeds for movements 1, 2 and 4 is quite magnificent, and I hearken back to Charles Rosen and his two CBS recordings. 'Slowing the opening movement is perhaps wrong, and makes it sound rather pompous instead. On the other hand, making it pompous is rather good, but I am interested in Rosen -- who is perhaps the most objective of today's pianists -- when he states that he can estimate the audience's response from the way he plays the 3rd, slow movement. Quite honestly, I can tell how they respond to the way I am performing when I am two-thirds through the piece. Opus 106 is one of the Monuments in Music, like the Late Quartets. I can understand that it poses the same kind of challenge to pianists as some of the modern contemporary works of the last century. It is also Beethoven's most uncompromising and technically difficult work -- definitely not there to be enjoyed!' I referred back to the fugal writing in the previous Sonata in A major, Op 101. 'Easy to play, but at the correct speed most difficult to control. Take the last three Sonatas Opp 109, 110, 111, and you sense you have come to the end with the composer's final benediction. But I still wonder how he might have gone on pianistically by exploring further.'