Beethoven: Hammerklavier

Piano Sonata in B flat Op 106

In its sheer scale, density of thought and technical requirements, the Hammerklavier presents a more severe test of a pianist's capabilities than any other of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas. The trio of sonatas that followed it - Op 109, 110 and 111 - may be more elusive and require a very special musical eloquence to illuminate all their facets, but Op 106, composed in 1817 and 1818, tests every aspect of a pianist's art, almost to the point of destruction.

If the last three sonatas are about reflection and the different kinds of poetic resolution a composer can achieve, this work deals unashamedly in confrontation, generating tensions that can't be resolved in any other way than in the gigantic explosion of the final fugue, whose deliberately clashing sonorities and raw-edged piano sound create a music that it is impossible to prettify. Yet the great slow movement, with its arching melodic lines and bewitching harmonic shifts, demands a different kind of authority altogether; and it's the fusion of these two worlds in the sonata that is unique even in late Beethoven.

The work has inevitably tempted almost all the significant pianists of the last 100 years, yet even some of the greatest fail to bring it off triumphantly; Artur Schnabel, for instance, whose reputation rests, in large part, upon his recordings of the Beethoven sonatas, is not at his most convincing in the Hammerklavier (EMI), where the sheer difficulties of the piano writing seem to destroy his poise.

Of all the more or less "historic" versions, the one by Solomon (EMI) recorded in 1956, comes closest to the ideal, centered upon the most moving account of the slow movement yet put on disc, and with sound that has come up miraculously well in its CD transfer.

I would be more than happy to live with that version to the exclusion of all others, but there are a number of more modern versions that match its profoundity and have a marginally better piano sound, with a list of contenders that includes many of the supreme keyboard artists of our time - Svitatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Alfred Brendel, Maruzio Pollini, Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Arrau and Richard Goode.

For my taste, it comes down to a close call between the first three of those: both the Richter (Praga) and the Brendel (Philips, the last of his three recordings) are live accounts, full of unrepeatable insights, but Gilels's studio version from 1983 has a considered majesty and presence that outshines all rivals, even if the recording does not quite do full justice to his glowing piano sound.

· Key Recording: Gilels, Deutsche Grammophon 410 527-2.