0 Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Op. 10 — No. 1 in C minora; No. 2 in Fa; No. 3 in D. Alfred Brendel (PO

Philips CD 0 446 664-2PH (59 minutes: DDD). Items marked a recorded at performances in Frankfurt in February 1995.

Selected comparisons — coupled as above:

Jande (12/90) (NAXO) 8 550161

Goode (4/92) (NONE) 7559-79213-2

Sonatas, Op. 10 Nos. 1 and 2 — selected comparison: Brendel (9/93) (VOX) 115772-2

Brendel has never previously gathered the three Op. 10 Sonatas on to a single disc. His earlier Vox and Philips recordings, only the former of which is currently available, provided a rather more arbitrary series of disposals. Two of the new performances are live, a fact tactfully alluded to by the briefest of brief bursts of applause before the music begins. It is a dreadful habit, starting records with applause, but here, at least, the applause is designed more as a flag than a boast. The applause at the end is similarly discreet though one would have liked half a second longer to savour the whimsy of the C minor Sonata's parting decrescendo before the know-all in the front row came in with his (or her) all too prompt accolade.

The two shorter sonatas, each in its own right a miracle of concentrated wit and musical daring, thrive not only on the wit and acumen of Brendel's playing but on the clear sense there is here of the music being played for someone. (After which, in Op. 10 No. 3, one rather misses — or, rather, one senses Brendel may be missing — the generally unobtrusive Frankfurt audience.) The one movement in the two shorter sonatas which Brendel would appear to have thought and rethought down the years is the F major Sonata's central minor-key Allegretto and its awed D flat major Trio. The 1964 Vox recording (reissued on a twodisc set) is remarkable here; the Philips LP remake (2/73 — nla) rather less so. Now Brendel combines the best of both worlds, the music's strangeness and hushed inward mood wonderfully gathered in only to be, as it were, payed out again. It is the art of the public expression of private emotion brought to its highest level of sophistication.

The much grander D major Sonata has its share of wit, and here Brendel had already found the perfect teasing pace for the finale in his Philips LP (2/73 — nla). His treatment of the first movement has never been quite as orderly or sure-footed as that of pianists like Kempff and Arrau; on the other hand, there is a world of difference between what Brendel aims at and achieves here and the rather more erratically delivered insights of Richard Goode on a rival Nonesuch CD of the Op. 10 Sonatas.

As to the D major Sonata's great slow movement, D minor Largo e mesto, here Brendel has always treated the opening eight-bar threnody slowly and rather formally, allowing the note of tragic dejection to sound only at the appearance of the lovely cantabile transition theme. Others have seen the music differently. Schnabel, slowest of all but never for a moment merely static, brought to the music a strikingly 'drained' quality. With Arrau it was high tragedy from the outset. And no one has articulated better than Kempff the sense of a kind of speaking sadness, the mesto quality immediately present. Brendel's playing of the concluding eight bars, by contrast, is as telling as anyone's. To adapt Malcolm's tribute to the Thane of Cawdor, nothing in the movement becomes Brendel like the leaving it.

Jend JandO's Naxos disc is an admirable bargain, a neat way of collecting the three Op. 10 Sonatas in perfectly nice performances. The Brendel, though, stands apart in a class of its own. RO