François-Frédérique Guy first came to my attention with a 1998 Harmonia Mundi “Les Nouveaux Interpretes” release that featured an impressive performance of Beethoven’s huge Hammerklavier sonata. He has since remade Op. 106, and this most recent version makes for interesting comparisons to its predecessor. One noticeable difference concerns Naïve’s close-up, dry, yet ample, full-bodied sonics, in contrast to Harmonia Mundi’s more resonant, slightly diffuse ambience. In essence, Guy’s intelligent, direct, and uncluttered conception remains constant, but with more sharply honed details. Dynamic gradations are less generalized than before, emerging with greater specificity and exactitude. The same goes for Guy’s articulation, making for a tighter, leaner account of the fugal finale’s more technically intractable sections.
Guy employs less pedal now in the first two movements, yet the heightened clarity of his fingerwork sacrifices the earlier version’s grand sweep and instinctive energy. For this reason the seams in the Scherzo’s transitions show more prominently than before. However, the great Adagio sostenuto reveals considerable coloristic and dramatic evolution on Guy’s part.
If only such eloquence spilled over into Op. 49 No. 1’s opening movement, where Guy fusses over the phrasing and works too hard for the money, so to speak. At least the finale has a light, scampering spring to its gait, and the C minor sonata’s Rondo is similarly supple. It turns out to be the best thing about Guy’s Pathétique, once past an uneventful, square-toed first movement, and a central Andante cantabile where rubatos and ritards gradually pile up, dragging the basic tempo.
