Twenty years ago, Mitsuko Uchida released a studio recording of Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas that remains a benchmark. Now comes this performance recorded live in Tokyo last October.
Those who have loved her previous recording won’t find big surprises – her interpretations remain similar, albeit at times a little broader or more elastic, and with less obvious urgency in, say, the brief second movements of Op 109 and 110. Yet, even from a pianist who has been playing these pieces for so many decades, the music emerges as if new: nothing sounds predetermined. Nor did Suntory Hall, which seats about 2,000, get exactly the same performance as she had given to a much smaller audience at Wigmore Hall in London, two weeks earlier. Most audience noise has been edited out, but the atmosphere of collective concentration remains.
