This Norwegian disc may be aimed largely at audiophiles, and indeed it offers impressively transparent piano sound even when auditioned on a decent conventional stereo. The music is less uniformly successful, however, and it's hard to understand what pianist
Tor Espen Aspaas was aiming at with the program of "Piano Music from the First and Second Viennese Schools." As
Aspaas himself points out in the booklet, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven did not think of themselves as forming any kind of "school," while Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg certainly perceived their efforts as related. In any event, only Beethoven is represented from the earlier triumvirate, and it's hard to see how the Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111, is specifically tied with the twentieth century Viennese works that round out the program. The finale of Beethoven's sonata is expansive, but the Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19, of Schoenberg and the Vier Stücke für Geige und Klavier, Op. 7, of Webern are concise to the point of being hyperconcentrated. The Schoenberg and Webern were on the cutting edge musically, but, however unusual they may have been, that's not really true of Beethoven's last works; Beethoven does not "push sonata form to the limit" in Op. 111, but instead uses the form in an entirely novel way, and there are many conservative aspects in Beethoven's late style, or maybe simplicities would be a better term, and simplicity didn't go far with Schoenberg and Webern. The Berg Piano Sonata, Op. 1, is a better match for Beethoven's curious mixture of languid lyricism and rigor, but it's a youthful work that lacks the mystical overtones of late Beethoven. The Beethoven itself is rather colorlessly performed, although
Aspaas has a convincingly careful way with the miniature structures of Schoenberg and Webern. Recommended for audiophiles only.