The F minor Sonata of Op. 2 goes quite well on this Schantz piano of 1797, but I am not so sure about the A major. At first sight, it would seem entirely appropriate to use a Viennese instrument of this date for music written in the city a couple of years before; but the exercise isn't particularly illuminating. Why? I think the reason may lie in the fact that in his first sonatas Beethoven was rapidly expanding not only the scale but the expressive world of piano music, and it seems likely this expansion was at a rate too fast for some piano manufacturers to match. I've enjoyed hearing Linda Nicholson in Mozart trios on her Schantz, and I'm sure it would sound well in trios and sonatas of Haydn, but its effect in this A major Sonata of Beethoven—which is already such an advance on the Sonata in F minor—is to tether him to the century that was nearly past. The piece is young man's music: new, startling, ambitious, with one of those deeply expressive set-pieces for a slow movement that are such a feature of his first maturity. This is the movement where Nicholson and the piano disappoint me most. Her tempo for it is hardly largo, for a start, and her regular accents make it a trudge. I miss too a full characterization of other facets of the sonata: vivacity and allure in the opening movement, wit in the Scherzo, grace and humour in the finale. The opening movement does not survive the taking of the second repeat; I doubt if it ever could. There are good moments but the fun, the forward movement and the dramatic tension tend to ebb away and run into the sand.
Instrument and player succeed in giving the other sonata a much fuller realization. The impression of a piano played nearly to the limits of its compass and sonority makes for some truly authentic excitement in the headlong rush of the finale. Here, one can believe, is something of the effect the young Beethoven himself must have produced as a player when he so impressed his first patrons. Once again, though, we're given the second repeat and it strikes me as superfluous, an unwanted action replay. The most successful part of the record is the short band at the end of Side 1, where Linda Nicholson carries off to perfection a jeu d'esprit. In this bagatelle, the last of the set Op. 33, Beethoven explores some of the characteristics of the forte piano and makes his exploration of them the raison d'etre of the piece. I have never heard it sound effective on the modern piano. A small gem, then, on a record which is otherwise good only in parts.
My disappointment extends to the quality of the sound, which is adequate but not really attractive—a reflection, I dare say, of the recording venue, which appears to have had little to contribute to the projection of the instrument's character.'