LDV80

How did this recording come about? Théo Fouchenneret: I met the director of La Dolce Volta at the end of my performance in the final of the Geneva Competition.We bumped into each other in a hotel lift, of all places! It was just after Bartók’s Third Concerto . . . ‘Just to let you know that you’ll be welcome to join the label if you would like to!’ So it’s a bit of a coincidence and also a non-coincidence. I just took the helping hand he offered me. I dared to suggest a slightly ambitious programme (laughter) and luckily he agreed! Why did you choose to couple these two Beethoven sonatas in particular? To be frank, it started with the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, which I had been yearning to play and record for a long time already. It’s a monumental piece, but there’s such a physical dimension to it that I really thought it was the kind of work that should be played young! Which is all the more daring in that it’s customary to say that you shouldn’t tackle masterpieces like that until very late in your career. That’s true enough. At the same time, I’ve always had teachers who encouraged me to dare to play it. I remember Alain Planès telling me about a conversation he had with Rudolf Serkin. Serkin asked him if he played it from time to time. Planès humbly replied that he was saving it for later, after his sixtieth birthday, not before. And Serkin retorted: ‘Well, you’d better start playing it now, because I’ve been trying to play it for sixty years and I still can’t!’