Had I been a Gramophone critic in 1984, I’m not sure I would have cast my Instrumental Award ballot that year in favor of Emil Gilels’ “Hammerklavier”, although I understand why this recording won top prize. Gilels’ forthright, steel-trap rhythm and powerful finger articulation really make you sit up and take notice, together with treacherous leaps in the first movement and fugal finale that land smack in the center of the keys. It’s easy to lose yourself in the pianist’s intensity, concentration, and seriousness of purpose. Yet it’s just as easy to feel frustrated by Gilels’ clipped, tight-fisted delineation throughout most of the fugue, with its provincial ritard into the final bar, or by an overly stark Adagio Sostenuto that could have benefited from more lyrical breadth and expressive generosity, in the manner of Schnabel or Arrau. Nor does the engineering help matters, for DG’s early digital production conveys a metallic glare in louder passages.
If you like your Hammerklavier bleakly tinted and moderately paced, I find Rudolf Serkin’s edge-of-seat inner rhythm better suited to the music’s monumental design than Gilels’ squarish sobriety. Interestingly, a live Gilels Hammerklavier recently reissued by Brilliant Classics replicates this studio version with less digital accuracy yet with 20 times the power, resonance, and cumulative sweep. That said, my favorite Hammerklavier practitioners on disc brave the explosive, unfettered terrain that usually materializes when Beethoven’s fast yet feasible metronome markings are taken to heart. For this reason I advise hunting down Charles Rosen’s digital remake for MusicMasters or, better still, Peter Serkin’s jazzier, lighter-fingered account on the defunct Pro Arte label.
