During the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, I often followed pianist Jean Muller’s impressive weekly online series devoted to all 32 Beethoven sonatas (available on YouTube). Later I learned that he had played an earlier Beethoven cycle between October 2007 and March 2009 in the small Luxembourgish city of Ettelbruck. The concerts were recorded and issued by both Bella Musica and Membran in budget-priced boxed sets that provided nothing in the way of booklet notes or documentation. However, it would be wrong to judge this release by its no-frills packaging: Muller’s stylish drama, fluid virtuosity, and contrapuntal astuteness bring consistent freshness and vitality to this well-worn repertoire. Occasional slips and blurs don’t matter in light of numerous spontaneous touches that a live experience offers.
Muller groups the Op. 2, Op. 31 and Op. 109/110/111 triumvirates in their own respective recitals, while mixing and matching the remaining sonatas to create well-contrasted programs. The three Op. 2 sonatas abound in delightful gestures, such as Muller’s easing into No. 1’s Menuet, his witty timing of the second subject in No. 2’s first movement, or in the way he allows the scintillating runs in No. 3’s finale room to breathe. His “Appassionata” fuses improvisational impulse and structural cogency, while Op. 22 exemplifies grace and elegance in all four movements. In Op. 26, Muller’s headlong Scherzo contrasts to his stark and deliberate Funeral March.
Both rigor and poetry characterize Muller’s wonderful Op. 101 and Op. 106 “Hammerklavier” interpretations. He masterfully times the mood swings in the latter’s fourth-movement introduction, and builds the first-movement development section to an intense climax, complete with the “inspired misprint” A-sharp in measures 224-225 that Schnabel, Arrau, and Solomon favor (Brendel and Kempff, among others, opt for the more logical, yet to my mind less interesting, A-natural here). Muller is one of the few pianists who gets the accentuation of Beethoven’s idiosyncratic slurs in Op. 78 right, while imparting uncommon luminosity to the Op. 28 Andante’s distinct legato and detaché articulations.
Muller also allows Beethoven’s controversial long pedal markings in the “Tempest” and “Waldstein” just enough resonant spillover to make their point. He doesn’t do so in the “Moonlight”, which features a rhetorical Adagio in the old-school tradition of Harold Bauer and Benno Moiseiwitsch, plus a slightly unsettled finale that contrasts to the Op. 10 No. 1 Presto finale’s brisk assertion. Muller’s spacious and heartfelt Op. 10 No. 3 slow movement is one of the cycle’s emotional high points, on par with his patient and unselfregarding way with the extraordinary concluding movements of Beethoven’s last three sonatas. Hopefully my observations will lead listeners to also determine further favorite moments.
The close-up engineering somewhat constricts the music’s wide dynamic scope, as if one were sitting right next to the pianist in a small room. This may be a drawback for listeners expecting at least a semblance of concert hall resonance. I, for one, don’t mind the intimate ambience, which reminds me of Yves Nat’s early 1950s Beethoven recordings for Discophiles Français. The bottom line is that Muller makes this music his own without resorting to eccentricity, micromanagement, or misplaced scholarship. In short, this engaging and attractively priced Beethoven cycle is a worthy complement to our reference versions.
