Towering, magnificent, definitive Beethoven --Recording of the Month--March, 2008"Beethoven: 32 Piano Sonatas, vol. 4 Rating five David Allen Wehr, piano (Connoisseur Society, 2 CDs) The first thing you're likely to notice about this set is the extreme clarity and detail of the recorded sound. Connoisseur Society has been at the leading edge of piano recording for decades and each year it sounds further evolved. But it won't be long before you forget the audio quality as you hear pianist Wehr performing Beethoven's late sonatas to virtual perfection. This is playing of the highest order. Not since Pollini's 1977 recordings have the sonatas in this volume, Beethoven's last five, been rendered with such a combination of meticulous fidelity to the written music and emotional profundity. Wehr has now recorded all of the Beethoven piano sonatas. If you enjoy Volume 4 you may well decide to acquire the other three. As a bonus, this volume includes an equally impressive account of Schubert's Sonata in B-flat. Highly recommended. --Richard Todd, Review from the Ottawa Citizen, 2/9/08These Sonatas are arguably Beethoven s greatest works and among the finest and most influential piano compositions ever produced. As when listening to Parsifal, one hears throughout the Hammerklavier little bits here and there that made it into many if not most of the ambitious piano compositions written since. I have on occasion ridiculed the banality and facility of some of Beethoven s early and middle period attempts at theme-and-variations, but in these last works, produced in his final decade of life he attained supreme, sublime, completely individual mastery of the form. Perhaps even more remarkable is that after a lifetime spent performing Bach s Well Tempered Clavier, Beethoven attained a unique mastery of the fugue form also, and wrote a group of totally individual masterpieces completely unlike any of the models provided by his teacher.   The spirit of pianist Artur Schnabel hangs over these recordings. He made the first recordings of the complete Beethoven sonatas on 78s in the thirties, and for many decades thereafter for most people any discussion of Beethoven sonata recordings began and ended with mention of his name. Schnabel had an astonishing ability to project his very considerable musical intelligence and showmanship by means of a piano keyboard. The recordings are still in print and easily available; many will say that the first step in getting to know the Beethoven Sonatas should be to acquire the Schnabel recordings. I have heard them, I admire them, I enjoyed them, and I think the previous statement to be perfectly reasonable. That said, I don t have the Schnabel recordings and don t listen to them.   The reason is that a concert grand piano is a living breathing animal; I ve been in a small room with a huge concert grand piano with someone who really knows what he s doing sitting at the keyboard, and the effect is almost frightening in its overwhelming power. Older piano recordings are like listening through a closed door; I want that door open. I d rather listen to David Allen Wehr live than listen to Schnabel through a closed door. We mustn t forget that pianists also listen to Schnabel and learn from him. In 1930, nobody else could do what Schnabel did; these days, that s not true. I suspect many modern artists would tell you they ve taken all they want from Schnabel and then added their own vision to that.   Since the Hammerklavier recording has a drier acoustic than the other recordings all the better to clarify the textures in the fugue I assume that it was recorded in Utica in 2004. The remaining sonatas have a more live acoustic, and I assume that they were the ones recorded during the previous sessions in Tarrytown. One of the results of this is that Wehr s recordings of the final sonatas are often softer in texture than some others. One hears stories of Beethoven destroying pianos by pounding on them and some pianists assume the obligation to try to do the same thing to a Steinway or a Yamaha, but they forget a few things. A modern piano treated kindly can make a lot, lot more noise than an 1824 Graf piano, so it isn t necessary to try to push it beyond the max. Also getting the maximum sound out of a good piano is not done with strength but with cunning. Even very sudden and loud Beethoven notes have harmonic content, and one should make sure that no matter how powerful the attack, all the notes should be audible. As Badura-Skoda s recording shows, Beethoven s actual piano was sweeter and more harp-like than most modern pianos, varied tonally more from register to register. As David Allen Wehr shows, it is possible to be powerfully dramatic and still make every sound as beautiful as possible, and the slightly richer acoustic of these recordings helps him do this. --Paul Shoemaker, Review from MusicWeb International, March 2008.