BEETHOVEN. Piano Sonatas. (a) No.28 in A major, Op. 101; (b) No. 30 in E major, Op. 109 (COLH62): (c) No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110; (d) No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111 (COLI-163). Artur Schnabel (Piano). HMV Q COLH62-3 (two 12 in., 32s. 3d. plus 5s. 3d. P.T. each). (a) from DB2467-9, rec. April 1934; (b) DB1822-4 (3/33), March 1932; (c) DB1957-9 (8/33), January 1932; (d) DB1656-9, January, March and May 1932.

It has been a uniquely fascinating experience to follow Schnabel through the complete series of Beethoven sonatas-a wonderful series indeed. Coming to his playing fairly fresh at the beginning of italas, I never had the chance to hear him play when he was alive-I scarcely dared hope that he could sustain the excellence he shows in the early sonatas throughout the 32. But he has done so, and these two discs of the last sonatas, together with that of the Hammer/clavier (COLH61) which I noticed briefly in April, represent in every sense the culmination and high point of a superbly successful enterprise.

Schnabel is said to have disliked recording because a gramophone record stood as something permanent and finished which for him was not so. "I am living from the hope of doing my work better tomorrow than I have done it today, and if I did not I could not live as an artist," he once remarked. As listeners, however, we may be quite content to have a line drawn where HMV drew one 30 years ago. We may notice unevennesses in the series, but there is scarcely a movement in all the 32 that we can count a disappointment, even on Schnabel's own terms. His remains the first complete set of these works that was ever made and the most distinguished. Particularly remarkable is the fact that his Beethoven still speaks to us with such compelling immediacy. The climate of musical performance changes with the years just as other things do, and whether you consider the ebb and flow of musical fashions some thing to be accepted or regretted, the fact is that to enjoy a performance of 30 years ago an effort of adjustment, sometimes a considerable one, has to be made. But Schnabel confounds this. He might have made these records yesterday; they haven't dated a bit. His Beethoven may well prove to be timeless. I shall be very surprised at least if I do not find myself listening to him with the same pleasure 30 years from now.

I mentioned unevennesses; there are some, I think, on the discs here—a few things which fall short of perfection and one or two others which would even more clearly admit of Improvement. But if the last word on the Hammerklavier had been spoken what a dull world for pianists we would be living in! In April I said that my first impression of Schnabel's performance of this sonata was of something almost untamed, a performance which conveyed more of the music's grandeur and brilliance and perhaps less of its notes than any other I had heard. It is true that in the fugue he covers the physical ground by the sheer skin of his teeth at times, but in the first movement his playing is really splendidly controlled considering the speed at which he attempts it (a tempo close to Beethoven's own metronome marking, incidentally—which is usually judged unrealistic, not to say unwise). A couple of hearings are probably necessary before one can take in the events of this movement at this pace; only then does the full majesty of the performance manifest itself. Now that I am accustomed to this tempo I do not want a slower one; somehow the speed projects the music closer to Beethoven's own overwhelming vision, and I feel that anything more moderate would lead to a corresponding loss of something precious.

The slow movement on the other hand is at another extreme—very slow and innig, as it must be, and perfectly distilled. To play a Beethoven slow movement really slowly, as so many of them demand, is perhaps the most difficult thing of all. Few pianists have the gift. Schnabel certainly had and the variations of Opp. 109 and 111, the arioso of Op. 110 and the little slow movement of Op. 101 all bear witness to it on these records. These four sonatas are all less extrovert than the Hammerklavier; in addition, they strain far less to give formal substance to their visions and it is correspondingly easier for the interpreter to match sound with idea. The A major Sonata, Op. 101, perhaps doesn't quite fit into this category—it's certainly the very devil to bring off. Schnabel doesn't convince me absolutely in it; after a wonderfully complete account of the opening movement ("a single stream of lyric melody dramatic in every subtle detail" Tovey called it, and this is what Schnabel makes one understand) he comes a bit off-poise in the March and scrambles the fugue in the finale.

But I have no reservations whatever about Opp. 109, 110 and 111. His poise and timing here leave nothing to be desired at all. The poise is even more classical than usual, I think; there is no lack of warmth and direct expressiveness, especially in the A flat Sonata, Op. 110, but in the variations of Opp. 109 and 1 1 1 he is at pains to let the patterns and structure of the movements speak as much as possible for themselves. I am sure this is right, particularly in the variations of the C minor, Op. Ill. The "static and ecstatic visions" of this movement are seriously disturbed if the phrasing in the arietta and the first four variations is too fussy and conventionally soulful: the whole point here is that nothing really dramatic is going on. The real event of the movement happens in the coda, at bar 106, where the trills begin. The dramatic coup is the extraordinarily telling harmonic colour of E flat major first mooted in bar 110. Schnabel makes the world of this, and afterwards, in the restatement of the arietta and the final long dominant trill, and not until then, he lets the music soar up on to the highest plane to conclude the sonata in a glorious C major cloud. Not until this concluding section can we fully appreciate what has gone before; and this, surely, is how the movement should be.

A fitting conclusion to a movement, to a sonata, and to a series of sonatas indeed. In all these Schnabel matches Beethoven all the way. Thank you, HMV, for making this masterly series available again. S.P.