A new Beethoven cycle to keep

Grade: C

In the 1990s the young Italian pianist Giovanni Bellucci gave us a reading of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata whose thrilling athleticism bore comparison with those of Maurizio Pollini and Charles Rosen. A few years later Bellucci began a complete cycle of the piano sonatas – but, rather than include his existing Hammerklavier , he produced a version that was in keeping with the style of the cycle: deliberately perverse, reinterpreting (that is, ignoring) the composer’s precise instructions in the score.

Only now has Bellucci finished the cycle, explaining in his pretentious liner notes that he was held up by his meditations on Beethoven’s true intentions. So, for example, the first movement of the Moonlight is as slathered in sustaining pedal as Debussy’s submerged cathe