Jonathon Brown
International Piano
October 2016

Performance of the Hammerklavier Sonata sem defined by which of the 14 declamatory opening chords you poise the blunderbuss upon. There's a big choice of emphases that define almost your entire vision. Moreover, Beethoven while exploiting the latest robist Broadwood pianoforte, also give a notoriously rapid metronome marking of equially robust daring; since the metronome was even more the latest gadget, a tradition emerged that uspects that the composer hadn't got the hang of it and misread too fast a speed.

Frenzy is counterpoised with flourish; his rocking phrases, especially in the third movement, which he does not ruch, are more mesmerising and cradle-like in their to-and-fro than you'll find anywhere else, like a tidal lapping over something that was washed before, presaging the crash to come. Osborne's frenzy is not quite so frantic, but nonetheless has an attractively paradoxical finesse about it.

His disc includes the Sonatas Op 90, 101 and 106, and the booklet esay suggests sequential creative links between them that we normally associate with the tighter triolgy of 109/110/111.