In my earlier James Brawn “Beethoven Odyssey” reviews I’ve often likened the pianist’s crisp articulation, lean textures, and linear orientation to interpreters such as Claude Frank, Seymour Lipkin, Bruce Hungerford, and Friedrich Gulda. He’s still more of an intimate than a heroic Beethoven player, though, so don’t expect the dynamic range and cosmic breadth of Claudio Arrau.
His Beethoven cycle’s penultimate release (only Op. 101 and Op. 106 remain) gets off to an inspired start with the wonderful Sonata No 13. Brawn’s walking pace for the first movement’s outer sections may not be an “echt” Andante, yet the central Allegro explodes with surprise. Happily, Brawn takes the Scherzo’s Allegro molto e vivace directive seriously, and is one of the few modern pianists to match Schnabel’s zany abandon point by point. Brawn judges his attacca transition into the Adagio con espressione to perfection. Although the Allegro vivace finale doesn’t quite match Igor Levit for leonine drive, Brawn’s clear delineation of the knotty counterpoint conveys more than sufficient momentum.
While the G major Op. 31 No. 1 Allegro vivace settles into a slightly slower tempo than Brawn sets at the movement’s outset, the dynamic variety throughout the pianist’s staccato chords impresses, and so does his graceful Finale. However, his square and rather studio-bound reading of the long central Adagio grazioso holds less interest. The E-flat Op. 31 No. 3 succeeds best in the inner movements; note Brawn’s evocations of woodwinds in the Scherzo and his lyrical eloquence in Menuetto. By contrast, his cautious and small-scaled traversals of the first-movement Allegro and Presto con fuoco finale never leave the ground.
Brawn comes back on form for his brisk and effectively terse F major Op. 54 first movement. He pokes the Allegretto finale’s offbeat accents instead of banging them out, and prevents the toccata-like sequences from bogging down through subtle shifts in voicing and pedaling. In short, Brawn’s Op. 27 No. 1 and Op. 54 are this release’s keepers.
