Samson Tsoy: Clean, eager playing overlooks what’s most important in Beethoven’s final piano sonatas

Samson Tsoy

St John’s Priory, Kilkenny

★★☆☆☆

The last of Friday’s three piano events at St John’s Priory is given by Samson Tsoy and devoted to the final three piano sonatas by Beethoven.

Tsoy is a very capable performer well equipped to meet the very particular demands of these works. But his playing on this occasion seems less than well judged for the small size of the venue.

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He projects too much and too readily, creating the kind of emphasis that in speech we associate with newsreaders and politicians. And none of these sonatas is a work in need of that particular kind of special advocacy.

He presents deliberation at moments when the music needs to flow. His rubato often interrupts rather than illuminates, he tends to emphasise the upper end of the dynamic spectrum at the expense of the lower, and he favours clarity of melodic line over richness or complexity of harmony.