Want to hear Beethoven’s Op. 119 and 126 Bagatelles plus a handful of short pieces played (for the most part) much slower than they should be? Want their drama, quirky wit, and lyrical sentiment wiped under the carpet and hidden from view, lest we should actually enjoy this music? Are you tired of the lightness of being and whimsical inflection Rudolf Serkin and Alfred Brendel bring to the second Bagatelle in the Op. 119 group, and wish that Dr. Klunk might materialize to lay his heavy hand on every beat? Want to hear the great Op. 126 set, but want to change Beethoven’s Andante con moto markings to plain old Andante? Hell, make that Largo extra large, and while we’re at it, hold the sublime No. 3’s Cantabile e grazioso–just the notes, ma’am. Is Glenn Gould’s willful ignorance of No. 4’s Presto marking still too fast for your metabolism? Want something even slower and with 70 percent less personality to boot? And what about those two little German dances? Looking for particularly dour, unsmiling, rhythmically lumbering, Teutonic performances?
If you answer yes to all or some of these questions, Claudio Crismani’s your Beethoven guy. He approaches this repertoire like a science student who places beautiful butterflies under a microscope, dissects their beauties pattern by pattern, wing by wing, and leaves them for dead. In contrast to this pianist’s extremely accomplished and caring recording of John Cage’s Etudes Australes for the same label, his Beethoven is way off base and utterly maddening to endure. I rate this disc a “1” for artistic merit because I sense that Crismani knows better, judging from tiny pockets of sensitive playing, as in his hushed shaping of the pedal-point passage in the aforementioned Op. 126 No. 3, measures 17 through 23. The sonics, however, are vibrant and attractively close-up.
