The most striking quality about these 1977 Hummel sonata performances (originally released by L’Oiseau-Lyre on LP) concerns the pronounced differences between the two fortepianos Malcolm Binns employs. For the D major Op. 106 sonata Binns uses an instrument modeled after Carl Schmidt circa 1830, whose leather hammers convey a mellow sonority that relates more closely to a modern grand than the brighter, twangier George Haschka model heard in the F-sharp minor Op. 81 work. Neither instrument holds its tuning well.
Binns’ interpretations are tasteful and intelligent, if rather stodgily phrased (the second subject of the D major first movement). There’s little of the virtuosic flair, panache, and character that Stephen Hough so effortlessly commands, notably in the F-sharp minor sonata Finale’s difficult broken octaves, double notes, and triplet runs. Similarly, the D major sonata Scherzo’s dotted rhythms are the type that Schumann trotted out time and again, and they require far more urgency and nervous energy than Binns’ workaday fingers concede. Unless you must have these works performed on period instruments, Hough remains lonely at the top.
