A new Beethoven cycle to keep – but hide

In the 1990s the young Italian pianist Giovanni Bellucci gave us a reading of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata whose thrilling athleticism bore comparison with those of Maurizio Pollini and Charles Rosen. A few years later Bellucci began a complete cycle of the piano sonatas – but, rather than include his existing Hammerklavier, he produced a version that was in keeping with the style of the cycle: deliberately perverse, reinterpreting (that is, ignoring) the composer’s precise instructions in the score.

Only now has Bellucci finished the cycle, explaining in his pretentious liner notes that he was held up by his meditations on Beethoven’s true intentions. So, for example, the first movement of the Moonlight is as slathered in sustaining pedal as Debussy’s submerged cathedral. Every sonata goes through the wringer, and generally speaking the more modest the piece the more grotesque the results: the delicious Vivace finale of the miniature Opus 79 sonata sounds as if it is being parodied by Satie.

But I’m not complaining. There are dozens of meticulous cycles of Beethoven’s New Testament of the keyboard out there. Bellucci isn’t the only pianist to play eccentric games with the music, but among the mavericks I can’t think of another whose technique is so formidable; he still has the chops to highlight individual lines in the midst of polyphonic storms, and if the results run counter to Beethoven’s markings – well, is it really a hanging offence? This one’s a keeper, then, albeit one you might want to hide, along with Glenn Gould’s Mozart piano sonatas, from your more fastidious music-loving friends.