Taking the plunge

摘要

I noticed the other day, on Linn Records' website, a new pairing of late Beethoven piano sonatas on the Alpha label, played by Filippo Gorini. He's an Italian, now aged 28. In 2015 he won the Bonn Beethoven Competition Award and attracted the attention of Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel [HFN Jan '16], who heard him playing the Diabelli Variations in a private recital. He has since been mentoring Gorini - who recorded the piece for Alpha to acclaim two years ago [ALPHA296]. The new disc [ALPHA591] is no less a simple matter for an interpreter. It's the last Sonata, Op.111 and the 'Hammerklavier', Op.106, with its vast Adagio stretching (in this case) to 21 minutes and a complicated contrapuntal finale following. It's a piece that Murray Perahia only recorded for DG at the age of 69, having set it aside for many years. And the conductor Bruno Walter [Classical Companion, HFN Mar '17] said he felt unable to conduct Mozart's later symphonies until he was 40 - he only came to Bruckner many years later.