While the late Julius Katchen made some of his biggest pianstic splashes in the burly waters of Romantic repertoire, he had to work a little harder to make Mozart and Beethoven his own. I miss, for instance, a sense of inner urgency binding Katchen’s fluent and direct way with Mozart’s “easy” C major (K. 545) and B-flat major (K. 333) sonatas. One might also expect a player of Katchen’s big-boned, extroverted temperament to impart to Beethoven’s “Appassionata” a profile more dramatic than the rather small-scaled version he recorded in 1956, which lacks the all-important da capo in the finale. Neither Mozart sonata, by the way, contains its exposition repeat.
Katchen’s 1960 Diabelli Variations remake (I’ve not heard his 1953 mono version) makes a compelling if glib case for the work as an unbridled, virtuoso vehicle. On the other hand, his dazzling passagework and teasing rubatos couldn’t be better suited to the composer’s atypical Polonaise in C. In his gentle way, Katchen captures the volatile dynamic contrasts and mood swings throughout Beethoven’s elusive Op. 126 Bagatelles, and he hammers the Op. 111 Sonata’s introduction with imposing strokes of granite. By contrast, Katchen’s rapt concentration in the arietta reveals the music’s visionary breadth to haunting effect. The latter recording was made during Katchen’s final solo sessions, months before his untimely death at 42 from cancer, and suggests what paths Katchen’s artistry might have taken.
