Audition: Beethoven - Piano Sonata Op. 106, Hammerklavier - Petri, Decca 1956

Egon Petri  (1881-1962) recorded this piece in New York at the Esoteric Sound Studio on the 11 June 1956. He had made an earlier recording five years previously and probably chose to make this recording for a new LP version of his reading.  Petri was influenced by Busoni his mentor.  His style was straightforward avoiding rubato and focussing on structural aspects. As this recording attests that he focused on the long line, a preference for speed over weight and a mastery of polyphonic transparency and clarity.

Petri was a connoisseur's pianist and his performances and recordings were lauded by collectors.  He was noted for his finesse in this reading but also a visceral, bold and quite muscular recording.  It's worth noting the acoustic is somewhat boxy - and incidentally one wonders what he was like in the concert hall.  That said what we have shows a pianist at ease with the challenge in hand and the recording is not limited by the venue.

Petri launches into the sonata opening bars with a firm hold which he maintains, picking the right tone to match Beethoven's intent.  And he negotiates the challenges with finesse and a great deal of fluency.

Petri bursts into the opening chords - these few bars from which the sonata springs are fragments later to be mined by the composer.  A mere five bars in Beethoven shifts the dial down and the tension abates as the search for clarity is less an aural assault.  I fear Petri is a bit rushed here but mere speed is not a problem in this sonata....yet.  The pianist moves through the somewhat ugly downward scale at bar 30 and the tension sustains until bar 46 when the delicate finesse shines through the pianissimo.  But this is dynamic Beethoven and in 15 bars a lovely bass rising figure to an ugly top line and then the first of this sonatas many trills.  There's a great deal of easy energy here the music around bar 70 tumbles out of the instrument like a spring.

Petri doesn't take the repeat, but presses on offering light touch at bar 155 but nothing to scare the horses.  The sonata proceeds in good order though around bar 320 Petri slackens his grip.  By the time we get to the fistfuls of notes at bar 355 Petri is almost mechanical.

The Scherzo is tidy, leaning into the structural rather than the emotional - though one can understand the implied ghostly dance quality to the mood.  At bar 80 (Presto) Petri seems to be harsher than some and the atmosphere is claustrophobic. It's a repeated elbow in the ribs until the last three bars are in a more intimate voice.

It is in the Adagio third movement where Petri is masterful - every ebb and flow of this haunting movement.  It is sorrow incarnate: Petri does as much as he can to leave as of the music in its most literal state on the ear. It's only after bar 140 where he gives the slightest hints of tension, vehemence (bar 143) and more in that vein from bar 160. by turns he is terse, perfunctory, sparse and eventually fast and furious (bar 168).

The Largo is perhaps the movement where Petri is most literal and most effective - despite the hideous trial for the instrumentalist, Technically, Petri is well equipped for the fugue and the peppering of trills on every page whilst trying to realise one of Beethoven's most complex structures at the piano stool and without hearing to test his creation. Petri, in this instance, is a master of the mighty piano works which followed in the 150 years following and including Hammerklavier.  But it's still not easy for him.  As it concludes Petri is astonishing in the bars around 240, and fierce at 285.  And finally at bar 374-5 the tension releases to reveal Beethoven's perhaps most magnificent of tension.  

Performance: 10 out of 10

Recording: 8 out of 10

Interpretation 10 out of 10