I’ve awaited this Beethoven sonata cycle from Simca Heled and Simone Dinnerstein with considerable expectations, which by and large have been met. Heled is marginally less convincing in the two pre-1800 works of Beethoven’s Op. 5. The F major sonata goes agreeably enough, but Heled misses chances to probe beneath externals, so you don’t always sense the historical proximity of Beethoven’s Op. 18 quartets, especially in the haunting Adagio preface to the first movement. It’s at such moments that the legendary Fournier/Kempff readings tell significantly, and how much more prescient and dramatic they make this work seem! But Heled and Dinnerstein dig a deeper expressive furrow in the G minor sonata, with some wonderfully inflected playing from Heled in the opening Adagio sostenuto.
The epic Op. 69 sonata in A major receives passionate advocacy from the outset, making this work sound monumental but never so rhetorical in gesture as to lose faith with its Classical origins. There’s real vitriol in the unsettled scherzo, and Dinnerstein’s attentive, carefully modulated playing permits Heled the expressive freedom required to maximize contrast in the trio sections. These performers bring more muscularity and rigour to the work than most, but there’s no disputing Fournier’s primacy as the great finale unfolds. True, Heled makes its sudden arrival a fittingly dramatic moment, and plays heroically later on; but Fournier and Kempff evince the grandeur of the movement with memorably aristocratic poise. Heled and Dinnerstein give impressive accounts of the last two (Op. 102) sonatas, making both seem incredibly forward-looking. Listen to their glowing collaboration in Beethoven’s greatest slow movement for cello, in the D major sonata: you’re constantly aware that this would have been the springboard for the ground-breaking cello work that Beethoven never got around to writing! So these are brilliantly alive and polished performances. Leaving aside the recent Anner Bylsma period-instrument cycle on Sony, it’s the most consistently illuminating traversal of recent years. But ultimately, nothing here displaces my admiration for Fournier and Kempff, taped in 1965 and still unsurpassed. Those digitized transfers are excellent, and DG includes the three variation works omitted here.
