This is Beethoven playing: lucid but passionate, strong but sensitive, restrained but soulful, and always and everywhere immensely profound. Although this is not Gerhard Oppitz's first disc of Beethoven's sonatas -- when he had a contract with RCA back in the '90s, Oppitz released a disc of the Pastoral, Tempest, and Les Adieux -- but it is far and away the better of the two. Not that the earlier disc was anything less than stunning -- Oppitz has apparently always had a limitless tone, a flawless technique, and an ability ...
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This is Beethoven playing: lucid but passionate, strong but sensitive, restrained but soulful, and always and everywhere immensely profound. Although this is not Gerhard Oppitz's first disc of Beethoven's sonatas -- when he had a contract with RCA back in the '90s, Oppitz released a disc of the Pastoral, Tempest, and Les Adieux -- but it is far and away the better of the two. Not that the earlier disc was anything less than stunning -- Oppitz has apparently always had a limitless tone, a flawless technique, and an ability to dig way down deep inside Beethoven's music -- but the 10 years between that recording and this have done nothing to diminish his tone and technique and only deepened his interpretations. From the C minor power of Oppitz's Opus 10, No. 1, through the F major lyricism of his Opus 10, No. 2, to the D major majesty of Opus 10, No. 3, Oppitz demonstrates that he is a Beethoven player in the grand tradition of Schnabel, Fischer, Backhaus, and Kempff. And in the closing Pathétique Sonata,...
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