Paul Lewis, Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol.4

This three-disc set is the latest volume of English pianist Paul Lewis's traversal of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas, the fourth in a series launched in 2005. Lewis's playing, especially in the early sonatas, stands out for his mellow, silky tone and his mercurial way with the music's many sudden contrasts, which he points up without exaggeration or arbitrariness. These two characteristics work beautifully in tandem; your ear is seduced before it's startled, and his readings of the Op. 10 sonatas are full of elegant, Haydnesque shocks. Lewis's tone makes the lyrical, fresh-air opening movement of Beethoven's "Pastoral" Sonata as lovely as can be, and the two "easy" Op. 49 sonatas aren't taken for granted, but given charm and significance. In his last three sonatas, a sort of valedictory trilogy, Beethoven turned twice to the theme-and-variations form. If in Op. 109 Lewis's slow variations are a bit up-tempo for my taste, that's only because I never want them to end. In the variations in Op. 111, Beethoven subdivides a slow, steady beat into smaller and smaller divisions over the course of 18 minutes; as the music finally dissolves into celestial trills and murmurings, the microscope becomes a telescope gazing out at other worlds. Lewis's playing of this enormously difficult movement arrestingly captures this inward/outward sense, appropriately capping his four-year musical journey.