The Lost Tapes – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 21 & 23

The Austrian American pianist Rudolf Serkin was one of the most naturally gifted and respected Beethoven interpreters of the mid 20th century. Technically there were better, but there were few who rivalled his intellectual rigour and deep sense of communion with the music. There was an honesty to his playing, a no-nonsense clarity that never descended to self-indulgence. All that, and more, comes through in his Beethoven studio recordings made in the three decades leading up to the 1970s. Serkin made recordings in the 1980s, which at times show a slight deterioration in his technical abilities. These two recordings, of the “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” Sonatas, were made in 1986 and 1989 when Serkin was into his mid-eighties. By then, Serkin was past his prime and was too ill to approve their release. However, these valuable documents still offer a glimpse of Serkin’s luminous tone and sense of drama—as you can hear from the outset of the final movement of the “Waldstein” that builds inexorably from an otherworldly opening. The “Appassionata” slow movement suffers from unevenness, but its finale has a defiance that is really quite poignant.