Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas (CD review)

HJ Lim, pianist. EMI 50999 4 64952 2 8 (8-CD set).

Beethoven so enjoyed piano sonatas, he wrote thirty-two of them between 1795 and 1822. While he probably didn’t intend them as a single cycle with any unifying subject matter, pianists ever since have been playing them in conjunction with other pieces in the series, sometimes presenting all thirty-two of them over a succession of nights. Then, with the coming of the sound-recording age, pianists clamored to prove their worth by releasing complete recorded sets. I confess I have heard in its entirety only one of the dozens of such sets currently available, that of Alfred Brendel (Philips), but I have other discs of select sonatas from the sets of Wilhelm Kempff (DG), Arthur Rubinstein (RCA), Sviatoslav Richter (EMI), Emil Giles (DG), Stephen Kovacevich (EMI), Vladimir Ashkenazy (Decca), Claudio Arrau (Philips), John O’Conor (Telarc), Maurizio Pollini (DG), Murray Perahia (Sony), and Vladimir Horowitz (RCA). And, of course, there are what seem like hundreds of other single and multi-disc collections of the sonatas available, so choice is almost endless.

In 2009 Korean pianist HJ Lim burst onto the musical scene with a popular YouTube video of a Rachmaninov and Chopin recital she had done, followed by an appearance in Paris where she performed the complete Beethoven sonatas. These events so inspired the folks at EMI Classics, they signed her to record the sonatas in the set we have here. There is little question about EMI’s excitement: Ms. Lim’s playing is wonderfully virtuosic, her performances remarkably intelligent, if highly idiosyncratic, and her personal appearance strikingly photogenic. It’s a winning combination for any performer.

Let's begin our look at the set by noting how Ms. Lim has chosen to present it. First, she has laid out the sonatas over eight discs, four two-disc packages. Second, she has opted to record only thirty of the thirty-two sonatas, omitting Nos. 19 and 20, which Beethoven wrote for family, friends, and students and whose publication he suppressed. Fair enough. Third, she has organized the sonatas not chronologically but according to a personal thematic arrangement. Thus, you will find various of the most-popular works sprinkled in amongst less-familiar pieces. This has the advantage for the listener of spicing up the content with variety.

The first disc in the set tells us a great deal about the direction Ms. Lim will be taking in the whole cycle in terms of approach, survey, and sound. She starts by including three sonatas-- No. 29 “Hammerklavier,” No. 11, and No. 26 “Les Adieux”--under the thematic heading “Heroic Ideals.” In her extensive booklet notes, the pianist explains her intensions by saying something to the effect that Beethoven had a special relationship with his Creator, a relationship he tried to communicate in his music. She continues by referring to the myth of Prometheus, the demigod giver of arts and fire to mortals; to Beethoven’s temporary admiration for Napoleon; and to the composer’s increasing deafness. While her critical analysis of the composer’s life and her own individual reflections appear weighty, much of it also seems rather dry and academic, ultimately providing less insight into Beethoven’s motivations than they might seem. Likewise, Ms. Lim spends three lengthy paragraphs on the composer’s metronome markings, saying on the one hand that he was pretty definite about things but finally concluding that the markings probably don’t matter as much as the pianist’s having “the right feeling.” If it all begins to seem rather highfalutin and vague at the same time, it probably is. I’d advise just listening to the music and ignoring much of the categorizing and composer examination.

Ms. Lim begins with the “Hammerklavier,” that most brawny, lengthy, and difficult of all the sonatas. You’ve got to give her credit for starting right in with the heavy lifting and getting the show going with a rousing opening act. She attacks the Hammerklavier” with vigor and passion, demonstrating both a scholarly and dazzling command of the piano that will serve her well throughout the cycle. If I have any minor reservation about the performance, it is the same as I have about all of her work: namely, that she appears to have a youthful enthusiasm that leads her into very fast finger work in the outer movements and sometimes less than penetrating interpretations of the slower sections. She is blazing, to be sure, but a quick, simple comparison to someone like Alfred Brendel indicates she still isn’t as mature or understanding as she may be in a few more years. Although No. 26 is a little more traditional and Ms. Lim’s speeds a bit more conventional, she still doesn’t let much or any sentimentality show through in her reading, which can be both radiantly fulfilling and frustratingly severe.

The first disc also tells us everything we will need to know about the sound. EMI recorded Ms. Lim playing a Yamaha CRS piano in Faller Hall, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, in 2011. The result is one of the cleanest, clearest piano recordings you’ll find, with excellent transparency and taut transient response. The venue is modestly resonant, and the piano shows up warmly and richly most of the time, with only a few instances of cold or hard sound. Since the clarity corresponds well to Ms. Lim’s analytical approach to the music, it’s undoubtedly a good fit, and I have no complaints. I found it extremely easy to listen to.

Disc two finds five sonatas categorized under the heading “Eternal Feminine -Youth.” Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really thought about Beethoven in terms of “eternal feminine.” Still, I suppose Ms. Lim’s characterizations of Sonatas Nos. 4, 9, 10, 13, and 14 “Moonlight” do, in a way, fit that description. The music is of a sweeter, gentler nature than most of the other sonatas, Beethoven as the true romanticist, the passionate yet wounded lover. The “however” is that Ms. Lim plays them with almost the same dispassionate precision she applies to the “Heroic Ideals” group. As an example, she zips through the famous opening Adagio of the “Moonlight” lickety-split. For comparison, both Brendel and Kempf take a little over six minutes to complete the movement; Ms. Lim takes about four and a half minutes, a full twenty-five percent faster. It’s not that her playing doesn’t come highly charged with emotion; it’s that it doesn’t necessarily convey much in the way of tragic or romantic feeling.

Disc three begins the next volume, and it contains Beethoven’s three earliest sonatas, Nos. 1, 2, and 3, under the heading “Assertion of an Inflexible Personality.” The “personality” is that of Beethoven, and Ms. Lim explains in the booklet that the young composer was typically confronting fate through a youthful rebelliousness. Perhaps it’s Ms. Lim’s own youthful rebelliousness that’s at issue here; I don’t know. In any case, listeners may recognize the opening Allegro of No. 1 from its use accompanying countless silent movies, and Ms. Lim seems to have a good time playing up its extensive melodrama. Nonetheless, I rather enjoyed its minor rebellion, too. Likewise, she provides a youthful exuberance in the other two sonatas.

Something like the dramatic innocence of the first three sonatas, the fourth disc finds four sonatas in the category of “Nature”: No. 15 “Pastorale,” No. 21 “Waldstein,” No. 22, and No. 25. In these works, Beethoven follows a course characteristic of the newly flowering Romantic Age in describing the universal appeal and dramatic innocence of the natural world. Here, we find Ms. Lim in extraordinarily good form. Her “Pastorale” is especially welcome, a genuinely ardent, expressive, descriptive view of Earth’s wondrous landscapes. If I have any minor reservation, it’s that her playing is so dextrous and precise that it almost seems as though at times she’s showing off. Her rather fast, heady plunge through the “Waldstein,” for example, appears more intellectual than it does insightful, more engaged in technique than it is a revelation of the soul. Still, with piano playing so scintillating, it’s hard to argue with the results. Again, EMI’s recording is clear and strong, well sustaining the performance.

And so it goes. Disc five contains three sonatas, Nos. 5, 6, and 7, under the umbrella “Extremes in Collision.” By this Ms. Lim means that these sonatas are polar opposites, and to prove the point she tends to play up the differences. I quite liked her interpretations of the slow movements; the Adagio of No. 5, for instance, is exquisite. And even if her intensity doesn’t do much for me in some of the outer movements, I appreciate her conviction. Disc six takes us to the theme of “Resignation and Action,” containing Sonatas Nos. 16, 17 “Tempest,” 18, and 28. The “however” continues to be that while she is undoubtedly an exciting pianist to listen to, she seems not to capture fully the introspective moments of, say, the Adagio of the “Tempest” with the same deep emotion of a Brendel, Kempff, or Perahia.

Disc seven Ms. Lim calls “Eternal Feminine - Maturity,” reflecting back on the earlier “Eternal Feminine - Youth” theme, now from Beethoven’s older perspective and containing Sonatas Nos. 24, 27, 30, and 31. Then, the set closes with the category “Destiny” and includes two of the composer’s most-popular sonatas, No. 8 “Pathetique” and No. 23 “Appasionata,” along with Nos. 12 and 32. It’s as though she were saving the best for last, and certainly she does up the two named sonatas in fine, fervent style, with yet much hushed confidence in the slower segments.

In the end, I’d say that for anyone interested in a one-and-only, possibly first-time purchase of a complete set of Beethoven piano sonatas, Brendel or any favorite pianist from those at the top of the review might be a safer bet than Ms. Lim’s EMI set. This is not to say, however, that one should not hear or sample or possibly own one of the single discs from Lim’s set; nor should one avoid Lim’s complete set as a second or third or alternative choice in one’s collection. There is no denying her playing is brilliant and blazing, her interpretations vital, and EMI’s sound clear and natural. It’s just that Ms. Lim’s performances may be too highly personal as one’s only realizations of these works.

JJP

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com

Readers with impolite, discourteous, bitchy, whining, complaining, nasty, mean-spirited, unhelpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@recycle.bin.

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa