Gramophone Collector

By Jed Distler

Gramophone UK, August 2025

Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Between 2013 and 2023 HieYon Choi recorded all 32 Beethoven sonatas at Berlin’s Teldex studio. The cycle’s physical edition is hard to source outside of South Koreas, yet can easily be found via download and streaming platforms. Her Bösendorfer grand’s mellow patina and registral distinctions don’t match the power and projection one finds in top-flight Steinways, yet they somehow suit Choi’s attention to small details of articulation and voicing. She fares best in the first 15 sonatas, with a scurrying brio and harmonic awareness that leave Julian Kim’s Op 2 No 3 at the starting gate, along with an Op 10 No 1 finale that takes Beethoven’s optimistic Prestissimo directive on fundamentalist faith, capping one of this sonata’s greatest-ever recorded interpretations. The E flat Sonata, Op 31 No 3, is a model of intelligent bravura. Granted, the pianist can be cautious to a fault (the Pathetique’s outer movements, most of the Hammerklavier, an over sedate Op 78 and low-voltage traversals of Op 31 Nos 1 and 2) or too pre-planned (Op 109). And listeners attracted to Ogasawara’s spacious Op. 111 Arietta may take issue with Choi’s terse stringency. Yet I know that I’ll be returning with pleasure to much of Choi’s cycle, especially in the early sonatas.