A nice sum

This second integral, more thorough and reflective than the first (see also Brendel / enclosure Brilliant) and especially enjoying a much better sound capture, also has the advantage of having a unity of tone higher than the third .
It is nevertheless at times blame him a slight lack of animation, a tone a little too uniformly reflective and meditative, a tone and a little too successful tempi. In this respect, the third wheel may sometimes (but not always) seem preferable.

This complete Sonatas is completed here in an original way, not the complete Concertos recorded at the same time with Bernard Haitink at the head of the London Philharmonic, but by that recorded in 1983, in public, with James Levine at the head of Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But these live recordings with Levine are remarkable for their intensity and risk taking and are overall more exciting than those made in the studio with Haitink.

This editorial choice has to be welcomed, especially since, for completeness, the Fantaisie Chorale with Haitink recorded in the 70 was added to the set.

So we take a very good complete Sonatas (although it is not without defects) and a really exciting version of the Concertos, all for a very modest fee!

For more details and to finish, here's how this second complete Sonatas was criticized in the Dictionary of compact discs and written by Diapason magazine and published in Bouquins in 1991: "The second version of Alfred Brendel - quite different from the first - found with extraordinary technical appreciation (piano and sound recording); the lesson of Wilhelm Kempff and especially Edwin Fischer Vision reflective, analytical, an inhabited and disturbing clarity Brendel articulates superiorly most.. Youth sonatas; his intellectual and sometimes refined internalization is often accompanied by a burning brightness, superiorly subtle phrasing His versions of the Sonata "Waldstein", opus 110, Sonata "Storm", the. opus 27 No. 1 "Quasi una fantasia" or even the "Pathétique" Sonata 18th opus 109 and triumph by the flexibility of nuances, the extreme originality of the harmonic lighting, pace and improvisante moderator. In contrast, the "Appassionata", the "Hammerklavier" and the opus 111, too "coloristic" weigh next to any evidence. "