Llyr Williams

Returning for his second and final lunchtime in BBC Radio 3/LSO St Luke’s complete Beethoven piano sonata survey, Llŷr Williams turned from the intimate and personal sonatas of his first recital to a major key set that also contrasted nicely with Khatia Buniatishvili’s minor-key trio of sonatas last week.

Before the rustic drone that opens the ‘Pastoral’ Sonata, we had two of Beethoven’s ‘Cinderella’ pieces - the sonatas rarely programmed for their own sake and usually only aired in complete cycles. The G major is the second of the two slighter works composed around the same time as the ‘Pathétique’ Sonata, one of the composer’s last works to be published in the 18th-century. The opening movement’s theme is split between the pianist’s hands and is rather tricky, although it seemed to present Llŷr Williams with no problems at all. It struck me that should Williams choose in later life to take up conducting, he might be an ideal Bruckner conductor: his stage manner is all stillness and his music-making retains a calm sense of line, however hectic the notation.

But there’s also impishness in Williams’s playing. In the curious set of variations of the second movement his mercurial address and glance audience-wards on the final loud chords encompassed the mischievousness of the music so well it was greeted with spontaneous applause, even before the intricate intertwining of the finale: proof, as Johnson reminded us, that Beethoven did have a sense of humour. In the F major Sonata, nestling between the giants that are the ‘Waldstein’ an‘Appassionata’, Williams also excelled, judging nicely the contrasting triplets and thunderous octaves of the opening movement and the finale’s propulsion.

Following a brief demonstration as to the difficulties of controlling the drone element of the ‘Pastoral’, and pointing to some other country references (particularly the first movement’s cascades, like waterfalls), Williams gave us by far the most famous sonata, enhanced by the almost water-like shadow play from the sun streaming through the wind strewn leaves on the trees outside, creating a dappling affect across the audience. This was a loving, evocative performance, matching the nickname, even if it was not given to it by Beethoven. Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 13 December.

Williams is a master of soft tone, and the largo of Op 7 contained plenty of that. He also relishes Beethoven’s eccentricities, while tending to look eccentric himself, and this served the F sharp major in good stead. His has been a fascinating exploration of the sonatas, and of what they mean to us today.

I heard three of Llŷr Williams's complete Beethoven piano sonatas recitals at Greyfriars kirk, each yet better than the last. As inward and serious as Melvyn Tan is outgoing and smiling, Williams communes with the piano as if seeking new layers in a palimpsest. The results, as in the Op 10 set last Monday, can be revelatory.

The real creativity takes place on the Fringe, which this year features an unexpectedly vibrant classical offering, headed by Greyfriars Kirk’s cycle of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas and string quartets. Llyr Williams’s titanic traversal of the Beethoven Op 109 Sonata on Saturday had “festival experience” written over it in letters 10 times as big as the standard symphonic programmes we are promised during the next three weeks.

Williams’ gift is to inhabit Beethoven’s writing and take it to the n^th degree of intensity. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the opening chords of the Pathetique sonata sound so granite-like and menacing and throughout the evening he constantly forced the listener to reassess their impressions of these familiar works. The opening of Op. 2, No. 1, for example, felt jaunty and angular before turning into something dark and brooding in the development, and the fistfuls of notes in the finale were electrifying. No-one new to this work would have guessed that this was Beethoven’s first published sonata: in Williams’ hands it felt like a work of staggering maturity and scale.