★★★★★

The first three volumes of his Beethoven cycle was released by Onyx, and now Jonathan Biss issues Volume Four via his own label. Beethoven would surely have approved of artists taking control of their destiny. Biss has organised his cycle by type and historical ties so Volume Four spools back to the beginning – to the Piano Sonata No 1 in F Minor – before advancing towards the great Appassionata in the same key, via Sonatas 6 and 19.

Biss writes in his booklet notes about the unassuming nature of Sonata No 1 – “can this really be how it all begins,” he asks, ‘it’ being the journey that ultimately led to the late sonatas. In these hands, though, Beethoven’s debut sounds far from ordinary. The fervour and intensity of Biss’s hot-fingered touch is something else. Beethoven’s models were Mozart and Haydn – but Biss persuades us of the unheralded harmonic lawlessness that lay just below the surface.

Contemporary with the Eroica, the Appassionata Sonata is full-throttle punk Beethoven, volatile and combustible, like anything from later in the great man’s career. I note, and dig, how Biss leapfrogs into that Alice-like descent towards the bowels of the instrument, smothering the elegant opening gestures. Biss doesn’t belabour the transition. It’s quick, clean, deadly. And in the last movement Beethoven’s abrupt gear-change into a finger-busting crazy fast tempo made me yell “yeah!” – a vocal exaltation normally reserved for Thelonious Monk.

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