Complete Sonatas for Piano - Classical Music Collection for Pianists, Students & Music Lovers | Perfect for Recitals, Practice & Home Enjoyment

Each time I listen to Gulda playing these sublime works I am more impressed. I've known most of these sonatas well enough for decades, from some of the acknowledged giants of the art and craft. Yet the first few times I listened to Gulda's reading I was reminded, strongly, of the feeling I had when first listening to Gould's performance of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier (Bks1&2) as well as his second Golberg Variations. First it was the intensely magnetic drawing in to the music, then the realization that Gulda is "inside" each and every note, and the space between them, and the entire architecture that holds each note together and each note, at each moment, building that architecture. -- It has been said that the thing about Arrau's playing is that he seems to be discovering the music as he plays. Elegantly unfolding the architecture, note by note, movement by movement. Gulda has this quality too. I prefer Solomon to Arrau, slightly, because of the (to me) deep sense of powerful and, sometimes, intensely felt poetry. I feel the same way about Gulda's reading. More so each time.Sound quality if fine. Price is an absolute bargain. His tempo is on the quicker side, but the notational articulation and phrasing is so precise there is only clarity and coherence. He never sounds hurried. Just like Pollini in this respect, but maybe "warmer" (?)There are many great masters of recorded Beethoven piano accumulated over the past 70 or so years. And we each travel along our individual musical paths to find what we most admire. Nevertheless it seems that Gulda's Piano sonatas are among the three or four most outstanding available.He will make you listen to Beethoven as though you've never heard him before. The occasional unfamiliarity can be unnerving unless you are willing to go along to see where he is taking you. Put these works together with his magnificent Bach Well Tempered Clavier and his sublime (with Fournier) Beethoven cello sonatas and it may be that Gulda has been the seriously most under appreciated pianist of the past forty years.THERE ARE NOW 3 sets of recordings. he one reviewed here is the very hard to find Brilliant Classics version. The earlier and the later (RCA?) have their value, no doubt. But it is THIS recording that is so extraordinary in sound quality and performance...