now playing, more of Uchida's Beethoven

start of Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJDiPUdwQzQ&list=OLAK5uy_mB0rA2WDsQSYq4czp5F4cRrLeQvNtEAuE&index=2

start of Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major, Op. 106 "Hammerklavier"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWzIttpuLLo&list=OLAK5uy_mB0rA2WDsQSYq4czp5F4cRrLeQvNtEAuE&index=4

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mB0rA2WDsQSYq4czp5F4cRrLeQvNtEAuE

>Here Mitsuko Uchida attempts the Mount Everest of piano sonatas, Beethoven's "Hammerklavier," a work of supreme power and complex structure. She offers a thrillingly virile performance, wanting neither in power nor accuracy. The first movement is a blaze of sound, a tiny pause after the initial statement of chords most welcome, with the bizarre rhythms intact and the harmonies sharp-edged. If the lengthy Adagio is missing some of its leaden hopelessness, it makes up for it in sheer darkness, and the violent flow of sound needed for the finale is clear and potent. Throughout, gentler passages are not overlooked, but daintiness never enters into the performance. Her reading of Opus 101 is just as fine. She misses none of the warmth of the opening movement; the sharp-edged March of the second movement is in strict time without ever becoming menacing; the fugal finale almost as impressive as that of the "Hammerklavier." This is a superlative achievement. --Robert Levine