CD Beethoven Piano Sonatas - No. 26 in E flat, "Les adieux", Op. 81a; No. 29 in B flat, "Hammerklavier", Op. 1061. Alfred Brendel (Pt). Philips ® (1) 446 093-2PH (62 minutes: DDD). Item marked a recorded at a performance in the Musikverein, Vienna in February 1995.

JBeethoven Piano Sonatas - No. 28 in A, Op. 101; No. 29 in B flat, "Hammerklavier", Op. 106. Louis Lortie (Pt).

Chandos ® W CHAN9435 (64 minutes: DDD).

Alfred Brendel, 65 this year, has said that this is the last recording of the J-Iammerklavier Sonata we shall have from him. In the course of an interview published in these pages in February (page 14), he told me that, while being in good working order and expecting to play to the level he sets himself for some time yet (and no one will be a severer judge of what he achieves than he), he is having to accept as inevitable the limitations of physical resources as begets older. So, no more cycles in public of all the Beethoven sonatas, and farewell to the Hammerk/avier and to one or two other big pieces. Expressions of regret all round, no doubt will be in order, but would that every pianist was as realistic is also my passing thought.

From Brendel's London cycle of 1983 Philips included a live performance of the Hammerklavier Sonata in the special 25-CD box ("The Art of Alfred Brendel", 2/96) that they issued to mark his birthday; and now we have another live recording of it from his most recent public cycle, given in various European and North American cities, to form part of the latest cycle on CD, which is otherwise deriving entirely from studio sessions. "There are not many live performances that one is able to use in this way, but I'm particularly glad that, with such a large, exhausting work, there have been some over the years which show that I've come through." Brendel felt that this one, given in Vienna in the Musikverein in Feburary 1995, was good enough to be "a decent way of leaving the piece".

Having played it over and over, I don't think there can be doubt about that. For me, this is Brendel at his very best. At the start, applause fades up and off he goes, at ease with his timing and the scale and rhetoric and, it would seem, completely confident of how the work is to be seen through to the finish. As listeners, the reassurance is excellent to have: we know straight away that he is going to be not just a reliable guide but an inspiring one. Having embarked on the huge journey - likened by William Kinderman to a "progression of heroic struggle and suffering leading to a rebirth of creative possibilities" - we sense the musical experience is to prove supremely satisfying, even if discomfiting in the course of it. (But one doesn't turn to the Hammerklavier Sonata for solace.) Brendel has played this mighty work for more than 40 years and commands it. The fusion of sound and sense is thrilling. The Hammerklavier Sonata realized only in the interpreter's head is not much good and the pianism here is marvellous, an object-lesson in how technique, at this level, is above all a matter of knowing what you're doing and of fortune favouring the brave. Hats off!

The recording is credited to the Austrian Radio. I'm very happy with it: we are in the Musikverein but also of course at home, and the distance from the sound is just right, with a wide dynamic range defined at all levels just as one would have experienced it there. The production is impeccable too, with applause fore and aft but no extraneous noise to irritate in between; and (most important) the pauses between movements have been correctly judged as part of the performance - longish before the great slow movement and, again, before "the return of vital forces in the slow introduction to the finale" (Kinderman again, in his excellent bookletessay). The pauses are, I am sure, as Brendel wanted them.

What a difference to the perception of the Hammerklavier Sonata live recording can. bring. Perhaps it should always be done this way! The studio recording by Louis Lortie has beautiful sound but, if for no other reason, is inferior to Brendel's account because the performance has not been lived through. It is full of fine things but the sense of a thread linking first note to last and movement to movement is not strong. You miss the feeling of the scherzo following on from the first movement in a particular way, and the slow movement after that - they just come up, one might say, as the next track number appears in the digital display. Brendel on the other hand commu nicates how they succeed each other - what is coming related to what went before - and it is a wonderful moment when the scherzo slips away and he holds us through the pause to make us savour the first notes of the new world we enter in the Adagio. Do I labour a small point? I don't think so.

It is of course unlucky for Lortie and Chandos that their praiseworthy version of this greatest of all piano sonatas should appear at the same time as an outstanding one. But there really is no contest. Lortie, one of my favourite pianists, though not always in Beethoven, is to be admired for many qualities and I must enumerate at least some: his sound, his intelligence and feeling, and the remarkable clarity he brings to the knottiest counterpoint in the finales of the Hammerklavjer and the other sonata on his disc, the A major, Op. 101. But comparison with J3rcndel tends to make him sound unexceptionable. That's unfair, I know, because he is better than par for the course; but he is light on the drama and play of dramatic tension - the overview- and Brendel, magisterially, has that and the detail. You notice (in Op. 106) that Lortie is a little quicker in the first movement but Brendel sounds more urgent because he's sharper with the rhythm. And while not appearing to be driving it particularly hard, he projects its sense of elemental force, and at the same time its spaciousness.

Lortie starts the slow movement well, but as if ill at ease with its passion and acuteness of deep feeling, slips into a generalized stream of nice sound and steady movement, broadly elegiac in mood, that really won't do, I think, as an interpretative stance in this, the profoundest of all the 'interior' slow movements in the piano sonatas. Without waiting for 'atmosphere' to establish itself, Brendel reaches out and straight away touches the farthermost regions of lamentation and transcending songfulness. He inhabits the movement while Lortie, on the outside looking in, sounds less and less sure of himself— particularly in the recapitulation, where the new figuration in the right hand ought surely to register as more than a decoration of what was presented before. It's not my wish to use one pianist as a stick with which to beat the other, but having had the two new recordings to listen to comparisons are inevitable.

Brendel in the F flat Sonata, Op. 8 a - less agitated, warmer and more relaxed than many players - is very enjoyable, but this is a record you buy for his Op. 106. Sad though we may feel that after such a long association with the Hammerklavier Sonata this is his last word on the piece, an interpretation not to be modified by performances to come, we can take delight in the way he has left it, an achievement hors de categoric, to be enjoyed for generations to come. A historic recording already? Oh yes, definitely, I'd say, to be put with the finest there have been of the sonata. Tell the grandchildren about it now. SP