Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110

“In an age when great, good, bad and indifferent recordings rub shoulders in a chaotic marketplace, Piotr Anderszewski's playing stands out like a beacon of light and quality. His is the most powerful and distinctive of musical voices, a rare combination of purity and adventure. In Bach's Sixth English Suite his intelligence is as razorsharp as his technique is immaculate. What an endless play of light and shade he brings to the Prelude, what buoyancy to the First Gavotte! His varied registration in the Second Gavotte is central to a deeply imaginative response to Bach; so too is the uncanny stillness he evokes in the Sarabande or the sinister momentum of the final nail-biting, fiercely chromatic Gigue.
In Beethoven's Op 110 he gives us a scrupulously modern equivalent of legendary recordings of the past (by Solomon and Myra Hess, for example), reawakening our sense of the otherworldly, the speculative and mystical in this late masterpiece. His poise and tonal translucency in the opening Moderato are enviable, and so is his explosive sense of contrast in the following Allegromolto. And if for some his attention to detail will seem microscopic and over-refined, others will surely rejoice in a concentration and integrity that are at once exhausting and exhilarating.
Exceptionally self-critical, Anderszewski once left the stage during a performance of the Webern Variations at the Leeds Piano Competition, unhappy and disgruntled with his playing.
Here, even he must have felt a sense of achievement, with his precise and deeply sensitive performance.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Brendel's set is among the most distinguished Beethoven playing of the analogue era. The recordings, made in the 1970s, are most realistic and satisfying in the CD transfers.” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ***