Dazzling: Marc-André Hamelin’s Hammerklavier

When Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata was published in 1818, pianists were confronted with a mixture of ‘demonic energy and a torrent of dissonances’, as Charles Rosen put it. Only the most freakishly gifted virtuosos could tackle it. The first recording was by Artur Schnabel, whose heroic assault on the finale sent wrong notes scattering in all directions. Today, technique has improved so dramatically that most students can steer Beethoven’s juggernaut without obvious mishaps. Even so, some great masters wait decades before taking the plunge. In this sonata above all, getting the notes in the right order is no guarantee that you have anything to say.

Marc-André Hamelin is now in his early 60s, which might seem to be pushing his luck. Not a bit of it. Hamelin’s spidery fingers, which can untangle the knottiest textures at the speed of light, produce a fugue of gleaming clarity. Meanwhile the self-effacing contours of his giant slow movement build to a devastating climax; less is more. The coupling is predictably dazzling: Beethoven’s earliest finger-twisting showpiece, the Op. 2 No. 3 Sonata.

Has Hamelin given us a library choice for the Hammerklavier? No, because anyone who hopes to understand this work needs to rotate between readings. There are dozens of options, but let me single out the dancing fingers of Murray Perahia, jaw-dropping intensity of Ernst Levy and magisterial grandeur of Martino Tirimo – three pianists who, to put Hamelin’s achievement in context, were years older than him when they first recorded this inexhaustibly fascinating epic and knocked it out of the park.