Composed in 1801, Beethoven’s Sonata No 14 is the second of the two works comprising his Op 27 that are designated as sonatas ‘quasi una fantasia’. Beethoven himself had nothing to do with its Moonlight sobriquet, which first appeared on printed editions five years after the composer’s death. The nickname originated with the German critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab, who wrote that the first movement evoked ‘a vision of a boat on Lake Lucerne by moonlight’. Such imagery sticks to this day, and it’s small wonder that the Adagio sostenuto movement has been anthologised, bowdlerised and parodied to death. Yet the more one gets to know all three movements, the better one can appreciate the music’s utter originality, expressive diversity and compactness.

Consider, for starters, Beethoven’s choice of key, C sharp minor, which was unusual for the time, and how all three movements share the tonality of C sharp (the central Allegretto is in D flat, which is C sharp’s enharmonic equivalent). Pianist Glenn Gould aptly described the three superficially disparate movements as an entity adding up to ‘a masterpiece of intuitive organisation’ that ‘escalates from first note to last’. The Adagio sostenuto’s placid ostinato accompaniment, for example, directly relates to the Presto finale’s galvanising upward arpeggios, while the phrase-shapes characterising the first movement’s long cantabiles become shorter and more compressed in the Allegretto.

With the possible exception of Für Elise, the Moonlight Sonata may be Beethoven’s most popular piano composition. Certainly it’s the most frequently recorded of the composer’s 32 piano sonatas, with hundreds of versions passing in and out of the catalogue over the course of a century. From this immense discography I limit my discussion to 28 pianists of different generations whose performing styles encompass divergent interpretative approaches. Naturally readers will note gaping omissions of first-rate recordings and important Beethoven players. As such, I implore you not to regard this article as a definitive summation of the Moonlight on record but rather as a starting point from which to explore further.

Early Moonlights

It is no slight to top-tier shellac-era Moonlight contenders such as Ignaz Friedman, Artur Schnabel, Wilhelm Backhaus, Benno Moiseiwitsch and Egon Petri that I turn most frequently to Harold Bauer’s 1927 recording. His long-lined alla breve treatment of the first movement abounds in meaningful poetic nuance, where such ‘old school’ devices as left-hand anticipations and cadential ritards sound organic and inevitable. Ear-catching diminuendos and off-beat accents murmur under the genial surface of Bauer’s Allegretto, leaving one unprepared for a finale that’s rarely been surpassed for controlled abandon.

Poetic nuance: Harold Bauer’s 1927 recording set an early benchmark (photography: The Tully Potter Collection)

My late pianist colleague Joseph Smith first encountered Josef Hofmann’s artistry during his student years in the late 1960s, when literalism was more or less the law. In the context of the times, Hofmann’s untrammelled, free-spirited playing was a breath of fresh air. Yet Smith also noticed, as he put it, ‘all of the tricks’. A complete Hofmann Moonlight survives in a decent-sounding aircheck from the Cadillac Hour of 1936. Depending on your point of view, Hofmann’s highly calibrated tempo fluctuations and contrived phrasings in the first movement will seem either insightfully personal or cynically manipulative, and I suspect that he flippantly sped through the Allegretto in order to get it over with en route to his vigorous, aggressively articulated Presto.

Compared with Hofmann, Vladimir Horowitz’s ‘tricks’ are relatively continent in the Allegretto of his live Carnegie Hall performance of April 28, 1947 (similar in tempo to his 1956 version, whereas his 1946 and 1972 readings are slower and more self-aware). The Adagio’s wide palette of timbres and pronounced melody/accompaniment interaction reflects Horowitz’s genius for gauging his pianism to mesh with the hall’s fabled acoustics. Horowitz’s friend Rudolf Serkin also knew how to project his ascetically antipodal conception to the rafters. In each of his Adagio sostenuto readings, Serkin’s rock-steady concentration and ever-so-subtle inflections cast a hypnotic spell. His tensile Allegretto lacks charm and ease but the Presto’s textual integrity and excruciating drive definitely compensate.

Although Serkin didn’t really love recording, Wilhelm Kempff thrived in the studio. He recorded the Moonlight on seven occasions between 1924 and 1965. At least six have appeared on CD. For both sonic and interpretative reasons I prefer Kempff’s stand-alone 1960 account over that in the 1965 stereo Beethoven sonata cycle. The Allegretto’s easy lilt and subtle expressive nuances are closer to Kempff’s robust 1940 wartime recording than to his quicker, relatively clipped 1956 mono LP remake. Only in 1940 does Kempff unleash the third movement at a truly whirlwind Presto, but the slower 1960 version bests 1956 and 1965 for continuity and inner rhythm, despite a couple of smudges. Kempff’s 1960 Adagio sostenuto is his most pellucid and organically flowing, and markedly differs from his sprawling 1924 acoustic recording.

If you want protraction to the nth degree, Solomon’s Adagio times out to 8'26" and continues to polarise critics. Read ‘The Trial’ in the November 2010 issue, where you’ll find a heated debate between Philip Clark (against) and Bryce Morrison (for). Personally, I buy into Solomon’s Zen-like grip. Elsewhere the pianist courts less controversy, especially in the finale, where PC appropriately likened the climactic demisemiquavers that puncture the texture to seismic shocks.

Mid-20th-century Moonlights

Why Roger Fiske described Annie Fischer’s EMI version as ‘mannered’ (11/59) is beyond me. This is heartfelt, red-blooded Beethoven pianism with plenty of ebb and flow, plus a merging of reason and intuition that is better experienced than described. My only quibble concerns a few slightly out-of-tune notes in the lower register. The musically similar and sonically superior version in Fischer’s Hungaraton cycle sports an even more incendiary finale.

Annie Fischer inhabits every bar of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (photography: The Tully Potter Collection)

Another engagingly intuitive Beethoven pianist, Daniel Barenboim, has at least six commercially released versions to his credit. He first recorded it at 16 for Westminster, and his genuine affinity for the idiom comes through with flying colours, despite such gaucheries as casual accents and dynamics in the Adagio, along with poor articulation and a few wrong notes in the Presto. I prefer it to Barenboim’s more self-aware (some might say self-aggrandising) first EMI traversal. The pianist’s flexible phrase-shaping manifests itself most caringly in his early 1980s DG recording.

Go to Radu Lupu, though, for the most indulgent Moonlight since Paderewski’s heyday. The Adagio’s extreme swooning and sighing makes Liberace sound like Schnabel by comparison, not to mention the Allegretto’s left-hand anticipations and predictable ritenutos. Conversely, Lupu pulverises the Presto into submission by slamming down the pedal and overdoing the dynamics. Emil Gilels delivered a similarly hammered-out Presto following two statically brooding movements in his February 1969 Carnegie Hall Concert (originally issued as HMV Melodiya ASD2544, 4/70). The pianist’s serious-minded and large-scale conception comes off more successfully in his 1980 DG studio remake, which benefits from more judicious tempos and greater tonal refinement.

My late American critic colleague Harris Goldsmith sensed Vladimir Ashkenazy’s affinity for Beethoven to be acquired rather than instinctive. I can understand his point vis-à-vis the 1977 Adagio’s expressive gestures, beautifully and tastefully shaped though they are (Decca, 10/79). Ashkenazy’s 1989 remake is a tad faster and tighter. Here one notices minuscule tempo adjustments in the Allegretto’s question-and-answer main theme and the Presto’s top-to-bottom textural clarity, although both of these movements proved more incisive in 1977.

The following three Americans brilliantly fuse knowledge and intuition. Richard Goode imbues his lucid balancing of the Adagio’s melody, triplet accompaniment and bass lines with the most subtle rubato, whereas Murray Perahia’s firmly held tempo makes expressive points through gradations in dynamics and sonority. You’ll rarely hear the Allegretto so thoughtfully voiced and lilting as Goode makes it, while Perahia is a tad measured and held back. Goode’s Presto is discreetly pedalled yet full-throated at the same time. Perhaps DG’s reverberant acoustic makes Perahia’s comparable conception sound a fraction less poised at the start, but his liberal pedalling at the climaxes conveys more startling impact.

Richard Goode is renowned for his Beethoven-playing (photography: Michael Wilson/Erato)

Their colleague Misha Dichter’s Moonlight is vastly underrated. Pentatone’s SACD reissue reveals more tonal heft and body than the ‘fortepiano brittleness’ to which Richard Osborne’s review of the original Philips vinyl pressing referred. Poetic introspection characterises Dichter’s slightly brisk Adagio, while the Presto is conservatively paced and meticulously accentuated. Unlike RO, I don’t find the Allegretto stodgy at all, but am rather intrigued by Dichter’s unconventional inner-voice activity. All told, an interesting interpretation deserving wider recognition.

More recent Moonlights

I concur with Harriet Smith’s mixed assessment of Nikolai Lugansky’s Moonlight, in which she accurately describes how, in the Adagio, he delays the dotted figure’s second note, ultimately dragging the music in the process. His heavy and emphatic touch spills over into the remaining movements. As a suppler, subtler and smarter antidote, Steven Osborne’s interpretation proves nowhere near as lightweight as Jeremy Nicholas’s review suggests.

Another recent Hyperion version hits and misses: Pavel Kolesnikov’s limpid Adagio evokes the composer’s controversial pedal markings without actually following them (more about this topic anon). His expressive pointing in the Allegretto brings a mischievous side to the music that few others notice, although the finale sacrifices fury for top-to-bottom accuracy. On the same label, Stephen Hough generates more tension and release in every movement. His purposeful shaping of the Adagio’s triplet figurations draws attention away from the bar lines, while the brisk and cogently inflected Allegretto defines ‘serious fun’.

Boris Giltburg marked Beethoven’s 2020 anniversary year by filming all 32 sonatas. The audio soundtracks gradually appeared, with each movement stemming from a single, unedited performance. Listeners may be bothered by sonic stridency in loud moments and the pianist’s occasional heavy breathing. Giltburg’s Moonlight is stylistically akin to Lugansky’s, except that there is more ebb, flow and continuity to the expressive underlining throughout the Adagio. Yet Alessio Bax’s Moonlight is more to my taste. It starts with with as gorgeous an Adagio as you can get. Some of the Allegretto’s clipped phrase-endings and minuscule tenutos are ‘a mite twee’, as one of my esteemed Gramophone colleagues would say. Yet Bax’s focused articulation and careful dynamic gradations make his Presto agitato sound faster than it actually is.

Rehearing Yundi’s DG recording compels me to revisit what I wrote in my May 2013 review. I no longer find his deliberation over the Adagio straitjacketed and unyielding, although it lacks Solomon’s warmth and Serkin’s tensile grip. There’s more swing and edge to the Allegretto than I gave him credit for, while the unflappable security behind the finale’s sheen and sparkle does not preclude nervous energy. Yundi’s Moonlight may not be the deepest in the catalogue but it wears well over repeated hearings and will not steer collectors wrong.

DG’s latest Moonlight features Alice Sara Ott. You can’t deny her meticulous attention to detail, although certain interpretative gambits sound prefabricated. For example, you can predict where section ritards will occur in the first movement, while the pianist’s outsize accents and shifts in emphasis throughout the Allegretto also seem plotted in advance rather than spontaneously arising. It’s a Moonlight that’s prepared to the nines, if not convincingly absorbed.

Among the 21st century’s Beethoven cycles, I find those of Igor Levit and Stewart Goodyear the most consistently stimulating. There’s little to choose between their respective Moonlights in regard to textural rectitude, linear awareness and sensible tempos, although Goodyear must have had a second espresso before launching into the finale! Mélodie Zhao completed her Beethoven cycle at the age of 20, making her the youngest pianist to have recorded all 32. Save for a constricted dynamic range, her limpid and tasteful Moonlight is worth noting. Yet she’s a babe in the woods next to French-born, Italian-based Muriel Chemin’s seasoned authority, especially in the Adagio, where one accepts this pianist’s occasionally desynchronised hands in light of her chiaroscuro tonal palette and tolling bass lines.

Any discussion of the Moonlight Sonata must mention that white elephant in the room: the composer’s pedal indications. Above the Adagio’s opening bar, Beethoven writes ‘Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamente e senza sordino’ (the entire piece should be played with the greatest delicacy and without mute). Between the staves he reiterates his request, writing sempre pp e senza sordino. While the effect is plausible within the limited resonance characterising fortepianos of Beethoven’s time, most pianists would say that this is impossible on a modern instrument. Not András Schiff, who at least had the courage to give it a try by keeping the pedal about one third of the way down throughout the movement. Yet to what extent does the resonant haze and textural overhang represent what Beethoven heard in his inner ear? We can always guess, but we can never know. Interestingly, the results are less muddy than in a similarly conceived and long-out-of-print fortepiano recording by the late Igor Kipnis.

Wide array of colours: Ronald Brautigam plays a Paul McNulty fortepiano (photography: Marco Borggreve)

If Schiff aims to scale down his modern Bösendorfer to a period-instrument aesthetic, the wide array of colours and articulations Ronald Brautigam elicits from his trusty Paul McNulty fortepiano result from big thinking. In the Adagio he justifies numerous rhythmic adjustments via textural differentiation and unexpected accents. At first the straightforward Allegretto seems a shade literal, yet more than one felicitous inflection gives Brautigam’s poker face away. This movement hardly prepares you for a Presto agitato from hell. What pent-up fury and relentless single-mindedness, yet without a trace of banging.

As you’ve gathered, collectors are clearly spoilt for choice. I, for one, wouldn’t give up at least half of the recordings I’ve cited, not to mention versions in my collection that readers will chide me for omitting: among them Nelson Freire, Martino Tirimo, Bruce Hungerford, Alfredo Perl, David Allen Wehr, Claude Frank and no fewer than three from Rudolf Buchbinder. But if I had to pick just one, I’d choose Annie Fischer’s Hungaraton recording. She inhabits this music in every measure, blending power and lyricism, heart and mind and ruggedness and fluidity into a fulfilling whole.

This article originally appeared in the December 2023 issue of Gramophone. Never miss an issue – subscribe today