Beethoven Piano Sonatas (Live at Wigmore Hall, London, 2025)

Boris Giltburg is one of those all-too-rare musicians, ever ready to push their Herculean technical skills to extremes in fearless pursuit of profound artistic insights. While the pianist’s Wigmore Hall audience observed near-Trappist silence, bar the odd wintertime cough, this live recording captures the intensity of their engagement with his formidable artistry. Listen to the excitement he generates in the finale of Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata (Op. 13, No. 8), among the best-known pieces for solo piano but all too often subjected to humdrum performances. His reading is filled with dramatic contrasts and arresting details, such as the staccato scales and fizzing arpeggios that precede the third appearance of the movement’s main theme. He proves an equally persuasive advocate of the Piano Sonata No. 4, raising serious questions about why a piece of such inventive brilliance and emotional daring is not better known. Giltburg’s head, heart and hands are likewise in union in his spellbinding interpretation of the Piano Sonata No. 26 “Les Adieux”, by which he projects the work’s vast emotional range with tremendous clarity and supreme sensitivity to its shifting nuances.