Someone asked for a recommendation for complete sets of the Beethoven
sonatas.

SCHNABEL, SCHNABEL, SCHNABEL - by far, the one set that is indispensable
for any serious collection.  The sine qua non of all sets, compromised
acoustics and recording techniques be damned.

BRENDEL - Likewise important, though if you don't care for the kind of
Germanic, central European approach that views climax as an occasion for
implosion rather than explosion (which is more or less to say Karajan vs.
Bernstein), then don't bother.  But Brendel's (late) set is a monumental
musical achievement.

KEMPFF - Soporific at times in that the premium he places on lyricism
sometimes attenuates rhythmic tension.  Nevertheless, there's a great
deal of of very beautiful playing, and they are well worth having

ARRAU - Philosophical, impeccably detailed (sometimes perhaps too much so,
and at the expense of a forward moving rhythm), fastidiously shaped and of
course, that deep, bronzen tone of his is particularly alluring.  Arrau is
the Rembrandt of Beethoven interpreters: subfusc, dark, serious and for
some, ponderous, but what glories await the most sophisticated and patient
ears....

RICHTER did not record them all, but quite a few, and I certainly recommend
whatever may be available, though in the early, live recordings from the
1950s his puzzling supersonic tempos sometimes compromise more than enhance
the music at hand.

Ditto for MICHELANGELI, whose Beethoven is marvelous, idiomatic, lyrical
and orchestral in scope, though in the household of color I think he must
have ahd a soft spot for woodwinds....

And GILELS recorded quite a few, many of them marvelously.  His live
performance of the Hammerklavier in Moscow in the late 1970s (available
on BMG-Melodiya) is simply transcendent.

ERNST LEVY, too, recorded only a handful, but these are titanic
interpretations.  Indispensable 0- if you can find them.

Other complete sets of note are John O'Connor's, which are elegant and
respectable, but not particularly exciting and certainly not transcendent.
Russell Sherman's set is mannered but often quite interesting; he brings to
the music a kind of pioneer spirit that's attractive in many ways.  Someone
mentioned Robert Taub's set in a favorable light, but here I strongly
disagree, In fact, though Taub does indeed play impeccably, note perfectly
and with fine musical grooming, I think the set is just AWFUL.  The man
plays with all the passion and understanding of a an accountant settling
receivables on a Monday morning.  The coda of the A flat, Op. 110, for
example, is completely ludicrous, and he fails utterly to grasp the crucial
retroactive tempo relationships that govern the stretto in the inverted
fugue.  There is nothing even remotely compelling about the concluding
page, where the cumulative rhythmic effect of the entire sonata up to then
(and particularly the rhythmic trajectory of the two fugues) should evoke
the storming of heaven; what Taub produces instead is the whining, weak
kneed complaint of a wimp paralyzed by fear, as if by going full throttle,
by milking those dissonances and trills and tremolos and registrational
distances for everything they're worth (and thus delivering at least some
modicum of the work's symbolic ethos) he'd get a nosebleed or throw up.
Anyway, his playing is vacuous and cowardly, and perhaps a bit dull in the
top story.  Even in the charming B flat, op. 22, he turns every anacrusis
into a downbeat, and assassinates inflection at every opportunity.  Of
course, you will get the notes, and he does play well, but why bother with
second rate performances when you can have a Schnabel or a Brendel? Why
waste the money? Of course, the up side is that Taub's Beethoven is much
better than his Scriabin, which is completely hopeless.  and perhaps the
worst on record, note perfect though it is.

I don't care for Serkin, though I respect him.  He's an inveterate,
merciless banger, and his sound is so ugly I need ear plugs in its
presence.  The man cannot play quietly to save his life.  Why it is he so
crudely interprets every accent, no matter what its particular genesis or
disposition, as an occasion for pounding, or as a sforzando, is a mystery
to me; certainly, that's an anachronistic idea that is utterly ludicrous
and in fact, wrong.  His legato playing is scrappy at best.  But if you
like potato farmer Beethoven, Rudy Serkin is certainly your man.

Keep a lookout for FREDERIC FRANCOIS GUY, a young French pianist who is
one of the strongest, most persuasive Beethoven interpreters I've heard
in years, though to date he has recorded (for Harmonia Mundi) only the
Hammerklavier and Op. 109 (the former is stunning, the latter no quite
as much so, but very, very good even so).

So the motto is: just stick to Schnabel, with whom you cannot go wrong.

Also spracht John Bell Young