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

asin: B00004LCAQ binding: Audio CD list price: $16.98 USD amazon price: $14.58 USD

The relationship between pianist Martha Argerich and the recording studio has always been an on/off affair. Consequently, many of her discs derive from live concert tapings. EMI is doing a great service to the pianist's legion of fans by issuing excellent-sounding live broadcast recordings, like the two concertos contained on this disc. Mozart's C Major Concerto K. 503 is new to Argerich's discography. Her skittish fluidity in the passagework of the outer movements downplays the music's operatic overtones, stressing instead the music's big-boned virtuosic parameters. Occasional patchy tone and unsettled entrances are a small price to pay for Szymon Goldberg's sensitive, well-balanced support at the helm of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. Why are the cadenzas unaccredited (Mozart left none for this work)? Argerich made a studio recording of Beethoven's joyfully brash First Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Giuseppe Sinopoli for DG in the late 1980s. This 1992 live version, however, finds the mercurial virtuoso in more spontaneous, rabble-rousing fettle. At the same time, she conveys more breadth and breathing room in the slow movement. Heinz Wallberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra turn in an alert, yet firmly rooted orchestral framework that supports the soloist without indulging her headstrong tendencies. One might expect a pianist of Argerich's capabilities to let rip in Beethoven's longer, wilder, first-movement cadenza, but she opts instead for the more frequently played shorter one. --Jed Distler

asin: B000FHBH78 binding: Paperback

Sheet Music for Beethoven's Sonatas No. 1 - 17, bound in an oversized paperback binding.

Eighteenth Printing

asin: B000TJUGQU binding: Audio CD

Label(s): Elite Classics

Composer:
Ludwig van Beethoven

Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat, Op.73 Emperior
1. I. Allegro
2. II. Adagio un poco mosso
3. III. Rondo. Allegro
Claudio Arrau
Royal Concert Gebouw Orchestra
Bernard Haitink

Triple Concerto for Piano, Violin & Cello in C, Op.56
4. I. Allegro
5. II. Largo
6. III. Rondo alia Polacca

Claudio Arrau
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Eliahu Inbal