New recordings of late Beethoven at his most heroic and visionary.

Andrea Molteni plays Scarlatti with ‘ringing tone and virtuosic agility’ reported Fanfare magazine of the Italian pianist’s collection of sonatas on Piano Classics (PCL10233). The Art Music Lounge praised his bold juxtaposition of Petrassi and Dallapiccola (PCL10222) as ‘a strange but wonderful album’, noting that ‘Molteni sparkles as he rips through the music with energy and élan’.

These qualities hold him in good stead for the rigours of late Beethoven. With his ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata of 1818, the composer challenged pianists and listeners alike to assimilate a work unprecedented in its length and complexity. Motivically linked by a descending third through the eventful course of its four movements, the Sonata opens with a precipitous Allegro. A mordant Scherzo then introduces a long and spiritually engaged slow movement, before the mighty finale hurtles towards its epic conclusion through a densely wrought fugue. In each aspect, then, the Sonata outlines blueprints for what would become known as Beethoven’s late style, whether expressed in solo, chamber, orchestral or vocal music. The most celebrated single result of that late style is the Grosse Fuge which Beethoven wrote as the finale to his String Quartet op.130. Persuaded by his publisher to substitute it for a less arduous conclusion, Beethoven left this mighty fugue to stand on its own, and so it has stood ever since, as a ferocious yet rewarding exercise of concentration and contrapuntal art. Molteni presents it in a 19th-century arrangement made by Louis Winkler which has attracted surprisingly few recordings.

At the centre of Molteni’s recital, the Sonata op.110 offers salutary contrast. Here too are examples of heroism, rustic humour and melancholy, but distilled to an essence of vitality.