The last thing i would do is argue with you gaer. What you said makes sense and yes am no expert on this sonata infact the last time i sight read throught this MvT was around 9 years ago. From my varios record collection and my own instinctive reaction to it i feel that it need less force, but since the mic was too close to the piano am obviously wrong. Infact even Kolji admited that it was a little too loud.
I have no intention of arguing with anyone.
Let me just make one point about "too loud".
Sometime in the early 1970s I heard Horowitz play in Miami. On this particular evening he played, in my opinion, far better than in any of the more famous live performances that were recorded after 1965. Perhaps he was more relaxed. The thing that surprised me most was that his playing was not extraordinarily loud (though certainly as loud as it needed to be). In fact, he played softer than any other pianist I've heard, and that was the big surprise for me. It made the climaxes sound thunderous, but it was contrast that did it. I had gotten a very different impression from listening to his recordings. So I am hyper-aware that when listening to recordings, what sounds wrong to us may be the fault of the technicians who do the recording, not the artist. And sometimes you can adjust for this to some extent. You might listen to the same recording "turning down the treble", to get closer to a sound that might have been considerably darker under live conditions. Again, if the whole sonata has been recorded with the same settings—which is likely—we can get a pretty good idea where the problem might be coming from. Judging from other performances I've heard from this same player, I judge him to be highly musical, so I'm apt to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I still feel that he has been influenced by Richters piano playing, Richter would bash the piano like that in his younger days, it was only in later years that he created a butifull pianisimo. I gess when you are young you have something to prove.
I think we should ask Koji who he was influence by.
Many people do not realize that Richter often played on rather poor pianos. While people in the West have been pampered, given only the best to use—think of Horowitz traveling with his own piano—my information has been that Richter played on just about anything, and in the old Soviet system that could be pretty bad. I've heard some things I love by Richter, other things I do not like at all, from all time periods. However, I do agree with you that many pianists, if not most pianists, develop different priorities as they get older. For one thing, I think the older we get, the more we realize that no matter how fast and loud we play, someone else will play faster and louder. Perhaps that was your point.
Regardless, I have no desire to offend anyone or cause any problem. I just wanted to point out that there were many things in this performance to admire too, which I think is only fair.
Gary
Topic: Chopin Sonata #3, Op. 58