Paavali Jumppanen - Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol 4: Opp. 31 'The Tempest', 78, 79, 81a 'Les Adieux' & 90 (2016)

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Paavali Jumppanen - Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol 4: Opp. 31 'The Tempest', 78, 79, 81a 'Les Adieux' & 90 (2016)

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Paavali Jumppanen’s Beethoven cycle gets better with each new instalment and nearly everything here is a keeper. He obviously adores Op 31 No 1: listen to the way he underlines the ‘ker-plopping’ effect of the Allegro vivace’s desynchronised chords with ever-so-subtle rhythmic distensions and shifts of emphasis, and without pulling focus from the basic pulse. Despite an expansive tempo for the Adagio grazioso, the music buoyantly moves forward by virtue of Jumppanen’s strong left-hand underpinning and by avoiding slackening or tapering the fast decorative right-hand passagework. The term grazioso returns in a lyrically parsed finale.

Listeners familiar with Jumppanen’s Tempest Sonata from a live Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum podcast will find this new recording bolder and more dynamically assertive in the outer movements. My only quibble concerns his neutral, matter-of-fact treatment of the hushed left-hand broken octaves that pianists such as Gieseking, Schnabel and Kempff made so disparately memorable. There are brasher Op 31 No 3 first movements to be had, yet Jumppanen’s fluttering semi-staccato shaping of the long lines equally invigorates, as does his crisply pointed woodwind-like articulation in the Scherzo. If the Presto con fuoco finale appears to rush ahead at times, the fault is with your ears, not with Jumppanen’s perfectly poised fingers and his over-the-bar-line phrasing.

The little Op 78 receives one of its finest recorded performances. It begins with a sensitively inflected, intelligently proportioned Allegro ma non troppo, followed by a rollicking Allegro vivace that revels in the music’s sudden major/minor mode shifts. Lightness and simplicity is exactly what Op 79 needs and receives in the first two movements. Jumppanen holds back at the third-movement Vivace’s outset, then works his way up to tempo – an unorthodox yet oddly effective touch. Op 90 fares best in the quasi-Schubertian second movement but the first movement is a shade heavy and square compared to recent contenders from Stewart Goodyear (Marquis) and François-Frédéric Guy (ZZT, 8/13). However, Jumppanen triumphs in Les adieux, fusing Schnabel’s surging ebullience and Solomon’s suave technical finish into a powerful, uplifting and personalised whole.

As before, Ondine provides state-of-the-art engineering and Jumppanen contributes superb annotations. I look forward to the fifth and final volume, which will include Op 7, the Pathétique and the last three sonatas.

Review by Jed Distler, Gramophone

Paavali Jumppanen’s Beethoven sonata cycle got off to an eccentric, provocative early start, but has steadily grown more likable, and now reaches its highest point so far. Where Jumppanen’s performances of the earliest sonatas, notably Op. 2, featured lots of improvised ornamentation in the classical style, not all of it welcome, here he mostly dials back on the unusual quirks. What’s left is clean, polished Beethoven with a distinctively cool, classical feel: you can hear the echoes of Haydn clearly here, especially since this volume contains some of Beethoven’s wittiest music.

Jumppanen’s biggest quirk here is a predilection for long yet deftly-timed pauses, especially noticeable in the codas of the slow movement and finale in Op. 31 No. 1, and in the almost overlong gap before the finale of the ‘Tempest’ sonata. But for the most part these choices fit the music, and the ‘Tempest’ sonata, rather than being a Sturm und Drang tour-de-force, is carefully articulated and prettily pedaled. There’s no way the drama can be wholly absent, of course, not the way Beethoven wrote this music, so don’t fear that this approach means a wimpy performance.

Much of the short second disc focuses on the sonatas in which Beethoven looked back, in his wiser years, to the classicism and simplicity of his youth. And here Jumppanen especially excels, his playing clean, glittering, and free of artifice. He lingers over the slow, mysterious introduction of Op. 78, but the rest of this ten-minute piece is played with an innocent simplicity, and a hesitance ever to make a loud noise. The next sonata is chattier by nature, but he again takes a much-appreciated soft touch; the slow movement is gorgeous.

This style is certainly not for everybody; I can imagine listeners wishing for the greater passion and intensity of Gilels, or the humility of Backhaus. Paavali Jumppanen has a very particular flavor of Beethoven, cool and laid-back but extremely precise and carefully articulated. In the framework of this style, he is a great success.

The recording, from several sessions across 2010-12, is as good as can be desired, if a touch bright in the highest octaves. The last volume of Jumppanen’s cycle, featuring a few early sonatas along with the great final trilogy, is due for release this autumn. If the excellence of these two discs is any indication, it should be mandatory listening for Beethoven lovers.

Review by Brian Reinhart, MusicWeb-International

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Paavali Jumppanen - Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol 4: Opp. 31 'The Tempest', 78, 79, 81a 'Les Adieux' & 90 (2016)

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Paavali Jumppanen - Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol 4: Opp. 31 'The Tempest', 78, 79, 81a 'Les Adieux' & 90 (2016)

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