Devoting a recital to two of the loftiest peaks in the 19th-century piano literature, Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata Op 106 and Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, is certainly a statement of intent, not to mention an enormous self-imposed physical and technical challenge.
The connections between them are clear enough. Liszt regularly performed the Hammerklavier, and it was one of the works, together perhaps with Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and Schumann’s Fantasy in C, that were the formative influences on his own sonata. But pairing them is still a daunting prospect for the audience as much as the player, and there were moments in the first half of Louis Lortie’s recital when it did seem to have been ill-advised.
For, despite the fearless way in which Lortie plunged into the first movement of the Beethoven, projecting it in a single, breathless surge, there was something effortful and a bit gruelling about the performance. Even the slow movement seemed restless, especially with the jaunty lilt that Lortie gave to the second subject, and his apparent unwillingness to allow the music the kind of searching profundity to which it aspires. He was equally unsparing in the finale, too, but often it was as if he was too involved with the inner workings of the music to see the effect his performance was creating or to allow the audience to appreciate it as a whole.
The piano sound was unattractive, too; the higher registers of the Wigmore’s recently acquired new Steinway sounded rather dry, lacking in depth, though after the interval, for the Liszt, it suddenly seemed more focused and supported. But then everything about the B minor Sonata was more coherent. Lortie seemed much more relaxed and now on his very best form, just as unflinching in the way in which he confronted all the technical challenges, but shaping them into a totally convincing view of the sonata, in which nothing was shirked or overlooked. This was superb Liszt playing, no doubt.
