I had been a Gramophone reader and LP collector since my early teens, thanks to the encouragement of an enlightened schoolmaster. As a postgraduate student, I was taken on by The Guardian as a concert reviewer, and it was partly on that basis a few years later that my by-then university colleague David Fallows – Gramophone early music critic – suggested that the magazine might like to try me out. As I recall, Max Harrison had declared his intention to move on, leaving something of a gap in the piano area.

My first Gramophone reviews lit up the firmament in May 1985. Of the three discs I covered in that issue the only one I waxed lyrical over was Murray Perahia’s solo Mendelssohn. In fact I wondered whether I was being deliberately targeted with an outstanding issue (Perahia), a dodgy one (Gulda in Beethoven's Op 111) and a middling one (Ingrid Haebler and partners in Mozart’s two- and three-piano concertos). I also remember thinking at the time that the tone of piano reviews was generally over-polite, bordering on sycophantic, and that my mission was not to become part of that club. I hope I didn’t over-correct. 

Mendelssohn Piano Sonata, Op 6. Prelude and Fugue, Op 35 No 1. Variations serieuses, Op 54 . Andante and Rondo capriccioso, Op 14

Murray Pera­hia pf

Sony Classical (CBS) (Buy from Amazon)

Put on this record and you may wonder why Mendelssohn’s piano music does not feature more prominently in the modern recital repertoire. Part of the answer is that the natural delivery and artistic wholeness of Murray Perahia’s interpretations is a rare phenomenon, and without those qualities the music can sound terribly cliché-ridden. Nor is all Mendelssohn’s output on the level of the Variations sérieuses or the Rondo capriccioso. 

In any case the present record is a godsend. The Variations have been well recorded before – there is Horowitz’s impetuous but supremely spontaneous account on RCA for one (2/76) – but surely never more masterfully than here. And the Rondo is pure delight. Not even Perahia can wholly disguise the hamminess of the Prelude and Fugue, but it is worth sampling, if only for one of the most perfectly judged accelerandos you will ever hear. 

The Sonata, Op 6, shows the 17-year-old Mendelssohn trying to do a late Beethoven, with mixed results. I feel like lifting the stylus past the protracted slow-movement recitative (notated without barlines, incidentally) and on to the transition to the finale where there is a sense of release genuinely comparable with Beethoven (the A major Sonata, Op 101). The extra dash of this finale is one of many reasons for preferring Perahia to Lydia Artymiw (whose recording on Chandos, 9/83 – has many merits of its own). 

The CBS piano sound is on the hard side, and it takes a good cartridge to track the more clangorous passages successfully. But the instrument, with its rather shallow treble tone, proves well suited to the textures of Mendelssohn’s piano style. Perahia’s pianissimo is breathtaking and his elfin touch in the sonata’s tempo di menuetto is irresistible. 

David Fanning (Gramophone, May 1985)