Paul Lewis
Sonata
(Harmonia Mundi)
Here is a beautifully packaged presentation, elegantly styled with rounded corners to the CD digipack. The distinguished French label Harmonia Mundi has inaugurated a new, mid-price reissue series called Initiales, designed to focus on its top artists. The first release, a double CD, features pianist Paul Lewis, a man at the top of the ladder and the peak of his prowess. Lewis’s recordings of the complete Beethoven Sonatas are universally acclaimed. His reputation as a Schubertian is second to none. So the discs, a kind of Paul Lewis sampler, feature his extraordinary mix of passion, power and poetry in Beethoven’s Pathetique and sparkling opus 79 Sonatas, and his sense of structure, colour and sensitivity in Schubert’s 19th and 20th Sonatas. Disc 2 also features Lewis’s 2003 recording of Liszt’s B minor Sonata. I have a notion that, back then, I had some reservations about his Liszt. Try as I might, I can’t track down those prejudices in this magisterial performance, with its exceptionally lucid playing.
Michael Tumelty
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