Catching Up With a Batch of Beethoven

Composers come into, and go out of, fashion--excepting Beethoven, who never had to be discovered or revived. He has proved himself to be immune to all the usual vagaries of taste and fashion: the constant “repertory” composer since his own lifetime, the audience favorite and recordings’ bestseller.

Even in an age when, we are told, interpretive giants no longer tread the Earth, so much Beethoven is still being released on recordings--new material as well as reissues--by such a bewildering number and variety of performers that even a professional listener misses most of it. Herewith, then, the first attempt among several in coming months at catching up with the most important, recent and reissued Beethoven.

Topping the list of the new and notable is a stunner recorded live on New Year’s Eve, 1991: “Beethoven in Berlin” (Deutsche Grammophon 435 617).

For starters, it’s consoling to find that the Berlin Philharmonic has not transformed Claudio Abbado into a ponderous Teutonic maestro, as recent studio collaborations have suggested. There is a rhythmic spring to his work throughout this gratifyingly long program that reminds one of his reputation-making energy of a quarter of a century ago.

It’s a flashy, incendiary program, comprising most of the “Egmont” incidental music, the “Choral” Fantasy, the concert aria “Ah! Perfido” and the “Leonore” Overture No. 3.

Abbado’s animating presence draws from his Berliners playing of full-throated grandeur, even a measure of raucousness, a vital sign verboten during the Karajan era.

The soloists are likewise inspired: Yevgeny Kissin blazing his way through the overheated, sometimes comical Fantasy with beguiling, youthful brashness, integrating his solo neatly with the excellent RIAS Chorus; soprano Cheryl Studer touchingly girlish in her “Egmont” arias, encompassing the weightier demands of the aria assuredly, and smoothly topping the strong vocal sextet in the Fantasy, while Bruno Ganz fierily intones the spoken lines in “Egmont.”

“Beethoven in Berlin” is heartily recommended to anyone interested in experiencing a gala concert, rather than merely another recording, in the home.

The final volume of the Tokyo String Quartet’s recorded traversal of the quartets of Beethoven is devoted to the late works, Opus 127 through Opus 135 (RCA Victor 60975, three CDs). And while it may not offer the ultimate thrills of live performance, it does offer a better-than-reasonable facsimile of the ensemble’s richly textured sound and mature style.

They are Romantic performers in the best sense, maintaining the big line without resorting to dynamic fussing or rhythmic distortion. Everything in this set is convincing, but its particular glories are the works’ most lyrical moments, for example the Adagio of Opus 127, the Cavatina of Opus 130, the slow movement of Opus 135.

Uniquely among today’s string quartets, the Tokyo is able to give us both gorgeous sonorities and two-fisted Beethovenian drama--seldom more potently so than in this set.

Among recent arrivals of Beethoven’s solo piano music, two from artists previously unfamiliar to this listener are quite out of the ordinary.

Andrew Rangell is a 40-year-old American who has presented the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas in Boston and New York. The recording in question offers intensely probing--rather than mercurial--interpretations of the last three sonatas, Opus Nos. 109, 110 and 111 (Dorian 90158).

His is a sort of darkly rhapsodic Beethoven seldom encountered these days, when the models are the propulsive, rhythm-oriented playing of Maurizio Pollini and the lighter-weight, coolly Classical dash of Alfred Brendel.

The long spans are what Rangell handles particularly well in these abstruse works. One can’t imagine his playing being equally suited to the aphoristic, punchy phrases of the “Diabelli” Variations, which the 26-year-old Austrian Stefan Vladar handles with such aplomb (Sony 48060).

Vladar offers a shapely, vital reading of these gigantic miniatures. On reaching the final variation, 54 minutes after the initial statement of Diabelli’s innocuous little waltz tune, we can look back on a witty, event-filled journey.

If Vladar doesn’t project the work’s heroic aspects, after the fashion of Sviatoslav Richter’s grandiose 1986 live recording (Philips 422 416), neither does he skate across its surface the way Brendel (also Philips) does.

On present evidence, Rangell is a deep pianist, Vladar at the very least a bright one. Stay tuned.