Alberto Sanna Plays Op 54

[Todd]

OK, I had to try it.  At twenty minutes, this makes the next slowest version I've listened to seem unbelievably speedy.  It's obviously awful beyond comprehension.  The first movement is torturous, but it's sheer joy compared to the second movement.  The US military and intelligence agencies used to (but definitely do not any longer) use heavy metal blasted at deafening levels to soften up detainees.  They ought to have used this cranked up to 110 dB.  It's the listening equivalent of watching a handcar brimming over with puppies descend a 2% grade rusty track terminating in a forty foot gulch.

While the name Alberto Sanna is unfamiliar, the YouTube channel it is on, AuthenticSound, is not.  It has popped up before.  The following line from one of the videos sums it up: "Beethoven unchained from today's 'industrial' focus and brought back to his historic roots as an experiment."  The channel is either a gimmick, a fraud, or the workings of a crazy person or persons.  The channel has various other grotesqueries, including a 4'21" Op 10/1 Chopin Prelude.  I mean, how bad can that be?

There are other LvB sonatas from Mr Sanna on the channel.  I'm not sure, but I think I'll pass.

[AnotherSpin]

I'm not sure how relevant it is, but I looked up a pianist called Alberto Sanna online and only came across a YouTube videos, nothing else, not a word. There is, however, a violinist with that name. It looks like this Beethoven performances on YouTube is just a goofy prank.

[Mandryka]

https://www.authenticsound.org/recordings

[JBS]

Having googled his partner in crime Wim Winters, it appears their whole schtick is the claim that at some point in the late 19th century musicians decided to play everything twice as fast as previous, and no one noticed or said anything about the change.

[Brian]

Oh, are they part of the metronome cult? They believed that metronomes were at half tempo (two clicks not one) until the mysterious, unexplained switch, and therefore all of Beethoven is supposed to be half as fast. Absurd cult stuff.

[hopefullytrusting]

Oh, are they part of the metronome cult? They believed that metronomes were at half tempo (two clicks not one) until the mysterious, unexplained switch, and therefore all of Beethoven is supposed to be half as fast. Absurd cult stuff.

[JBS]

Oh, are they part of the metronome cult? They believed that metronomes were at half tempo (two clicks not one) until the mysterious, unexplained switch, and therefore all of Beethoven is supposed to be half as fast. Absurd cult stuff.

So it's not just them?
And it's more than Beethoven. Apparently anyone with a metronome.
Wonder what will happen when they try it on Bruckner and make Celibadache look like a cheetah.

[Todd]

One of the more prominent examples - if it can be called that - is one Maximianno Cobra.  His LvB symphony cycle takes up thirteen discs, with a just shy of two-hour Ninth. 

It was covered on this forum many moons ago.

[JBS]

One of the more prominent examples - if it can be called that - is one Maximianno Cobra.  His LvB symphony cycle takes up thirteen discs, with a just shy of two-hour Ninth. 

It was covered on this forum many moons ago.

I thought he was a one-off.
Silly me.

Sanna and Winters do it in 10 CDs with two fortepianos.
https://www.authenticsound.org/beethoven-9-symphonies

Their Ninth comes in at 110 minutes.

[(poco) Sforzando]

The channel has various other grotesqueries, including a 4'21" Op 10/1 Chopin Prelude.  I mean, how bad can that be?

Prelude or Etude?

In any case, I listened to Sanna, whose sanna-ity must be questioned as well as his musicianship and technique. His note specifies q-120 for movement 1, but clearly he is slower than that, about q-80. And worse is the unevenness of his triplets in the B section; he always holds the first note of each triplet slightly longer, so that at times he's playing the motif almost in duple meter. As for the finale, his dogtrot pokey tempo is not much different from that of Charles Rosen (in the CD accompanying his book on the sonatas), from whom I would expect better but who takes the tempo marking of Allegretto too literally for this perpetuum mobile. I don't need the finale to be played at a presto, especially as there has to be room for the coda to speed up, but I'd say an Allegro moderato is more suited to the character of the music. 

[Todd]

Prelude or Etude?

An Itude.