Described as a ‘super virtuoso;(Harold Schonberg) and once as ‘the greatest pianist in the world’(the Independent) Marc-Andre Hameln shies away from such descriptions with a contempt bordering on anger. My playful dig that it was surely better to be so described than as an pianist of lesser stature was coldly received, his normally outwardly genial nature clouding over and making me retreat to a more acceptable topic.

   No artist likes to be confined within a single journalistic epithet, be it ‘virtuoso’ or ‘intellectual’ etc conscious that such journalistic suggestions suggest limitation. Long associated not much with the virtuoso repertoire but rather in repertoire that makes virtuoso demands Hamelin has felt frustrated by such confinement . True, there are his extensive recordings of Haydn, Mozart and Schubert but the emphasis has been on Alkan, Medtner and Chopin -Godowsky. A request to record Beethoven’s last three Sonatas remains in abeyance which makes Hyperion’s new issue, a novel combination of early and late Beethoven cause for gratitude.

   So let me start with what might seem a perverse back- to- front commentary, with opus 2 No 3 in C, sometimes affectionately known as ‘the little Waldstein’(they share the same key}, Yet there is nothing little about demands which take classical virtuoso writing to a new and exuberant level with no more than a token backward glance at Haydn. Here Beethoven strides ahead in all his early glory and assurance with only a hint  of   later profound and speculative qualities.

   Hamelin’s overall mastery is astonishing, his legendary technique allowing him a clarity and brilliance known to very few pianists. He is all ‘con brio’’ in the opening Allegro, his playing an apt alternation of vivacity and lyricism. His timing is like that of a great actor, and in the playful third movement Scherzo his inflections are as telling as they are economical. Throughout and perhaps most remarkably in the scintillating concluding ‘Allegro assai’ Hamelin achieves precisely and exactly what he intends and an overall assurance enough to leave lesser pianists pale with envy.

  And so to the ‘Hammerklavier,’ the so-called Mount Everest of the keyboard. But climbing Mount Everest or swimming the Channel, while not exactly commonplace, are today familiar accomplishments. Once a source of wonder they are no longer unique events. Similarly, the ‘Hammerklaver’ was once viewed as both unplayable and incomprehensible. Beethoven himself wrote of a Sonata ‘which will give hard work to the pianists when it is played fifty years from hence,’ while for Stravinsky the ‘Hammerklavier’ is ‘forever new.’ Personly speaking I recall the awe I felt on two London performances, one by Tamas Vasary the other by Alfred Brendel  at a time when it was rarely played.

   Today such wonder is swept partially aside by a generation of pianists who take what were once considered daunting musical and technical difficulties in their stride. Again, the ‘Hammerklavier’ is in the repertoires of a great many pianists and I have come to feel the validity of Denis Matthew’s complaint that Weingartner’s orchestration of the Sonata destroys an essential built in strenuousness, the weight and heft of Beethoven’s masterpiece, making it the equivalent of a helicopter ride to the summit of Mount Everest. He might well have gone on to question the facility of many of today’s pianists, of making the necessarily difficult sound easy and arguably out of character.

   For Hamelin there is no question of, say Schnabel’s wildness, his inaccuracy and telescoped phrases, a  partial consequence of his frantic desire to obey Beethoven’s metronome instructions. Yet an effortless ‘Hammerklavier’ is a contradiction in terms. And so while I am filled with admiration for Hamelin at one level I am left cold at another. His mastery remains a  source of wonder yet there is a very modern form of evasion, a detachment that scorns a deeper involvement. The ‘Adagio sostenuto’(once memorably described by J.W.N Sullivan ‘as like the icy heart of a mountain lake’ while beautiful is without the depths sounded by previous masters such as Schnabel and Kempff. There are many impressive gestures, the rapid crescendo/decrescendo in the piquant principle figure of the Scherzo, the distant chime ending the ‘Adagio’ yet overall there is a price to pay. In a sense you are caught between Scylla and Charybdis, between a storm and stress that interferes with the composer’s spiritual stature and a facility that avoids depth of expression. Hamelin  is masterful with a vengeance yet he allows your mind to drift in this of all Sonatas when it should be transfixed.

   Hyperion’s sound and presentation are admirable as always,

Bryce Morrison