Beethoven Piano Your resource for the piano music of Ludwig van Beethoven

asin: B0000037B3 binding: Audio CD list price: $33.98 USD amazon price: $65.45 USD

Rather than present the sonatas in chronological order, each disc is refreshingly arranged as a mini-program that juxtaposes contrasting works. While Bernard Roberts doesn't quite command the flexible technique of Sviatoslav Richter or the individual point of view set out in cycles by Schnabel, Arrau, Kempff, or Yves Nat, those wishing a super-bargain Beethoven cycle will not be disappointed. --Jed Distler

asin: B000003CYP binding: Audio CD list price: $9.98 USD amazon price: $22.58 USD

How many times have you heard a child in the other room playing--or attempting to play--Beethoven's "Für Elise" or Edward MacDowell's "To a wild rose"? Well, here you get these and 16 more all-time favorite little gems, performed to unaffected, unpretentious perfection--a real treat for anyone who's ever labored over piano lessons, and anyone, child or adult, who loves piano music.

author: Ludwig van Beethoven asin: 0486245632 binding: Paperback list price: $24.95 USD amazon price: $16.47 USD

Full scores of 5 great Beethoven piano concertos, reproduced from the authoritative Breitkopf & Härtel edition, with all cadenzas as he wrote them. The works reveal the pianistic and orchestral mastery of Beethoven's early and middle periods as well as his innovative genius. New table of contents.

asin: B000PDKUES binding: Audio CD

1-3.sonata no.1 in c op.53.4.andante favori op.57/5-77.sonata no.30 in e op.109

asin: B00004UAOE binding: Audio CD list price: $17.98 USD amazon price: $17.98

This two-disc set commemorates the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont by several distinguished European musicians, including violinist Adolf Busch; his brother, cellist Herman Busch; and his son-in-law, pianist Rudolf Serkin. Marlboro, a unique community of artists of different generations and backgrounds who inspire and teach one another, has opened the world of chamber music to many young musicians and become a breeding ground for fledgling ensembles. Many of the participants on this recording are now renowned soloists, chamber musicians, and orchestra principals. And the playing is fabulous. In the Beethoven Concerto, Serkin plays with a beautiful sound, great expressiveness, and freedom, taking all the time in the world to caress every note and nuance; his transitions are miracles of poise, his climaxes are grand. In the slow movement, a supplicant pleads with a stern deity; in the finale, humanity's joy of life is restored. Schneider's conducting is sympathetic, but not always synchronized with the soloist. Serkin's son Peter conducts the Choral Fantasy, a piece hastily written for a special occasion and its performing forces, not unlike those at Marlboro. Together with its message of musical uplift (no text is included), this makes it singularly appropriate for the Festival, though with its bombastic beginning and somewhat trite Theme and Variations, it depends on the performers' enthusiasm to make it work. The second disc features the strings and winds. Dvorák's Quintet Op. 77, an early work despite the late opus number, adds a bass to the string quartet, enhancing the sonority and allowing the cellist free use of the upper register. The performance, which includes the second movement Dvorák later removed and recast as an orchestral Nocturne, is beautiful, making the most of the work's youthful exuberance and lovely Bohemian melodies, and almost concealing the composer's still imperfect command of developing his material. By contrast, Janácek wrote his wind sextet Youth when he was 70, at the peak of his mature skill, yet it, too, has an amazingly fresh, buoyant vitality. Vigorous, mournful, spooky, lyrical--its mercurial moods and beguiling melodies make it irresistible, and the performance is terrific. --Edith Eisler