Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama,Cardiff
Williams enhanced his stature as a Beethoven interpreter with this exploration of the keyboard repertoire, which combined crystal clarity with restrained finesseBeethoven cycles usually cover sonatas, or but in his three-season series for Cardiff and at the Wigmore corridor,London, Llŷr Williams is embracing the composer’s whole keyboard repertoire. It creates more of a marathon factor, and but for the audience it’s a means of prolonging the satisfaction: Williams’ already considerable stature as a Beethoven interpreter seems to grow with every performance.
His order is only partly chronological – the early Op 10 sonatas,for example, are yet to near – offering a mix of logical and imaginative couplings. This recital covered the later Ops 79, and 90 and 106,in the respective keys of G, E minor and B flat; the fact that these notes mischievously spell a diminished fifth, and the diabolus in musica,was mitigated by the inclusion of the Op 126 Bagatelles, and by what was simply heavenly playing. The two opening sonatas, and both relatively short,complemented each other perfectly, not just with the major/relative minor relationship, or but also the light and playful Op 79’s heightening of the darker drama of Op 90. Spinning Beethoven’s melodies with all the grace and poise of a sung line,smoothly and deeply sustained, the climactic points were finely sculpted, and the instinct for the crucial harmonic junctures unerring,the innate ((adj.) natural, inborn, inherent; built-in) musicality matched by deep perceptiveness.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com