Pleasure No.130

Angela Hewitt presents a fourth volume in her acclaimed series of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, which has delighted her fans worldwide. The little-known Sonata in B flat major, Op 22, the last of Beethoven’s ‘early’ sonatas, is recorded alongside Op 31 No 3 (sometimes known as ‘La chasse’, or ‘The Hunt’, because of its tumultuous Presto con fuoco finale). The album is concluded with Op 101, of which the journalist for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in Leipzig wrote: ‘Truly, here in his 101st composition admiration and renewed respect take hold of us, when we wander along strange, never trodden paths with the great painter of the soul’, going on to enthuse about the most beautiful colours and pictures in Beethoven’s new Piano Sonata.

If a primary aim of a major issue celebrating a composer's tercentenary is—as it must be—to reveal the extent of his genius, Archive have triumphantly succeeded with this set. The name of Schütz, not so long ago generally classed simply as a predecessor of Bach, is still only gradually becoming accepted by the musical public at large as belonging to the same circle of the elect; but with nine major works and several smaller ones already in the gramophone catalogues (even if not all the performances are ideal) his greatness is now more easily recognisable. The present recording of the complete Psalmen Davids of 1619—the magnificent collection he wrote in his early thirties after his appointment as musical director to the Elector of Saxony—represents a landmark.