Alfred Brendel

The "Hammerklavier" Sonata was Beethoven's main creative preoccupation during the latter half of 1817 and the greater part of 1818. Even today, it stands as a supreme challenge to the pianist. It represents, in Alfred Brendel’s words, "the outer limits of what a composer of sonatas can accomplish, a performer can control, or a listener can take in. In a magnificent exertion of will, it combines grandeur and delicacy, the grand sweep and extreme density of detail." On the opposite scale to the "Hammerklavier" are the two Bagatelles from the late set op. 126 (it marked Beethoven's farewell to the piano) offered as "encores" in the present recital. They show Brendel's mastery of the miniature: the slight relaxation of tempo for the lyrical middle section in the major of the G minor op. 126 no. 2 providing a perfect foil to the nervously abrupt style of the outer sections; and the pedal-saturated sonorities of the following A flat major piece perfectly realized. Scarcely less of an intellectual and technical challenge to the pianist than the "Hammerklavier" Sonata, and even more orchestral in conception, is Schubert's "Wanderer" Fantasy, D. 760. The performance of the work featured as an additional bonus on this DVD offers a rare appearance on film of the American pianist Julius Katchen (1926-1969). Katchen was an artist renowned above all for his interpretations of Brahms, but he was equally at home in repertoire stretching from Mozart to Gershwin. For the greater part of his life he made his home in Paris, where this virtuoso account of Schubert's masterpiece was given just 18 months before his death at the age of 42. - Program notes.