These Beethoven performances stem from a privately recorded recital with pianist Egon Petri taped in July, 1954. Though ill health had forced the elderly pianist to reduce concertizing during his last years, Petri's big, natural technique remained largely intact, together with his direct, heartfelt musicianship. The "Les Adieux" sonata, I believe, appears for the first time, while Beethoven's last three sonatas were previously issued on a Dell 'Arte LP and as part of Music and Arts' four-CD "The Art of Egon Petri" compilation. You wonder if Petri opened with "Les Adieux": scrambled passagework in the outer movements indicates that the pianist hadn't quite warmed up. He fares better in the Op. 109 sonata, drawing sharp dynamic and dramatic contrasts in the middle movement and bringing plenty of breadth and fluidity to the third-movement variations.

The lyrical Op. 110 also captures Petri at his radiant, communicative peak, notably in the touching cavatina. In the Op. 111 sonata, Petri makes more of the opening Maestoso's dissonances and digs deeper into the Arietta's sepulchural trills and arpeggios than he did in his more polished yet less personalized studio recording on 78s (reissued on APR). Compared to Music and Arts, Pearl's transfer is less full-bodied but brighter on top and contains a higher degree of tape hiss. About 50 seconds into Op. 109's first movement, a slight sharpening of pitch suggests a different source may have been spliced into the master.

--Jed Distler