Schubert: Piano Sonata in A, D. 959; Piano Sonata in B-Flat, D. 960. Ronald Brautigam, fortepianist. BIS-2624.
Ronald Brautigam is a fantastic musician. That's why I feel a little bad about what I'm going to say here. But I'm going to say it anyway, because my first loyalty is to the music as I perceive it ought to be performed. To be blunt, late Schubert is stylistically beyond the point where you should be using a fortepiano. The problem is that this instrument lacks the rich tone colors, timbres, and sustaining abilities of the modern piano. This is simply anathema to Romantic music, including the earliest varieties. The performer's resources become fatally limited in spite of any considerable technique brought to bear. With repertoire by Haydn and Mozart you don't really feel such deficits; the buzzy, shallow action of the fortepiano is more properly part of the 18th-century sound. For my money, the instrument's expressive capacity gets reached with early Beethoven. By the time you're tackling things like the Waldstein Sonata, the Appassionata, or the Hammerklavier, not to mention pretty much all of Schubert's keyboard masterworks, the modern piano is far and away the superior choice.
Actually Brautigam's problem here is twofold. You have the instrument's limitations, and you also have how these limitations adversely affect the performer's interpretive choices. I noticed this straightaway with D. 959. In a work of such long lines, Brautigam is sometimes forced to play a little more frenetically than one is perhaps used to in this music. Why? Because if he doesn't do so the sound in the broader stretches threatens to dissipate too quickly. Take the very opening. A modern piano player has the luxury of rendering these chords more deliberately...because they'll sustain longer at a louder dynamic. But fortepianist Brautigam is forced to take this passage more aggressively. The trouble is that his instrument already sounds punchy, and so an unidiomatic timbre (more on this in a bit) and jarring attack only compound each other. The sonata immediately gets off on an awkward foot. Or consider the left-hand chords that begin the development section in the same movement. Brautigam can't rely upon deep key action to make these sonorities sound "floaty" and ethereal. Instead they distractingly clunk along while he executes this lyrical area as best he can, handcuffed by a mismatched tool for the task. In many more instances does one sorely feel the fortepiano's lack of resonance.
We also run into issues of tone color (or a lack thereof). A good pianist can use his/her modern instrument to produce many more such shadings, which come in handy when you'e playing music by Schubert. The latter's repetitions of melodies and their different figurations simply beg to be shaded differently. A great place for this is the second movement of D. 960. But about all Brautigam can do is play these beautifully refigured melodic phrases louder or quieter. His instrument lacks the capacity to really color varied material like it ought to be colored.
Worst of all is the timbre. Even when Brautigam is doing everything as well as he can (which is often), I'm distracted by the 'plunkety-plunk' of the instrument. This tends to be most egregious during moments of great passion. A good example is the middle section of the D. 959 rondo finale at measures 146-167. We need strength and sonic depth here but we get neither; the fortepiano sounds too brittle and twangy for me to take this music's intended affect seriously. But even in calmer places (say, movements I and sometimes IV of D. 960) I hear left-hand ostinatos that just clang or buzz along. Every time an especially low note is hit I can't shake my impression of a bass kazoo. That's NOT what you want in any of this music!
I'll say it again: I'm not one of those critics who appreciates "new ways of hearing things" for their own sake. I like new things to be justified in other ways. Brautigam has recorded much Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven for fortepiano. A lot of it is superb. But casting about for stuff that doesn't fit this instrument well is him putting his professional niche before the music. There are many fine recordings of Schubert's final two piano sonatas. If Brautigam can't compete with those on a suitable instrument, he should find something else to record.
Verdict: Collectors Only
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