** BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonatas, Volume III. Robert Taub, piano. (Vox Classics, 2 CDs).
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Taub’s seriousness, musicality and mechanical reliability do not add up to compelling or authoritative Beethoven performances. What’s most dispiriting in the American musician’s sober approach is the lack of burning drama in the opening or Schubertian lushness in the finale of Opus 90, which is the emotional and spiritual gateway to Beethoven’s five final piano sonatas. Also missing: the depths, heights and flames in Opus 57, the “Appassionata” Sonata; this careful reading proves merely mundane. Taub does find the true character, and many of the charms, in the multifaceted humors of the E-flat Sonata of Opus 31, however, delivering its whims wittily and with a spontaneity often missing on these discs. The breadth and greatness of Opus 7, alas, remain terra incognita: undiscovered, undefined and uncaressed.
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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good), four stars (excellent).
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