Waldstein sonata

I just received my set of the Beethoven sonatas by Claude Frank and, reading the notes that come with it, Michael Steinberg writes: 'Originally, Beethoven designed it [The Waldstein sonata] in three movements, but then he tossed out the ornate and charming rondo that was later published separately as 'Andante favori,' and the 28 mysterious bars in 'adagio molto' that he put in its place are just what he calls them, an 'introduzione.''

In the Frank set the timings for the three movements are 9:45, 9:03 and 5:05. This is way off from the two other Waldsteins I have: Lupu comes in at 10:56, 4:36 and 10:39, and Kempff is pretty close to Lupu. I haven't compared the Frank version with these other two but, what's the story? Are there two versions?

'Frank'-ly, those timings make no sense. There's no way Frank could stretch out the Adagio to 9 minutes, and no way anyone could play the rondo in just over 5. Does track 3 on Frank start in the middle of the last movement, or did the label just flip-flop the timings for the 2nd and 3rd movement? I would be extremely surprised if Frank reverted to the original Andante favori, a pleasant enough rococo piece but no match for the mysterious, astonishing harmonies of the present slow movement. But on the off chance that he did, you'd know it, as the Andante favori would stick out like a sore thumb.

Nine minutes for the Introduzione? I cannot imagine it being played so slowly. I think the timings for ii and iii have been reversed.

Cheers

Playing the piece on my computer it reads the times directly from the disc and the Frank timings are 9:47, 4:41 and 9:30. The booklet timings are wrong. As an aside, all the timings are off a bit: 4:07 in the booklet reads 4:17 when read off the disc and the like. They're all like that. I'll check some of my other discs. Is that common?

MIFrost schrieb:

Yes, although 10 secs is quite a bit (also my computer gives sometimes slightly different timings than my CD-player), it is not really a problem in most cases (I guess it depends on how breaks/silence between tracks is divided up by the machines)

Yes, though usually it's a matter of a few seconds. Sometimes not, though - as part of my quest for a Brahms sym 3 with a first movement that somewhat resembles allegro con brio I bought Dohnanyi's when it was first released based on the timing given on the back of the box - which proved to be at least a minute off; the performance was utterly conventional (in that regard, anyway)....

I bought Barenboim's Teldec Wagner twofer looking forward to a 7'07 Meistersinger Prelude, only to find it was the Act 3 prelude.

Gulda on MHS/Amadeo clocks in at 9:21 (with expo repeat), 2:45, 8:15.