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

asin: B00004VCQ8 binding: Audio CD list price: $10.98 USD amazon price: $10.98 USD

Collection Du Millenaire.

asin: B000EAV6BS binding: Audio CD list price: $16.98 USD amazon price: $30.71 USD

Beethoven's last three piano sonatas have long been regarded as the Mt. Everest of the form, heights that can be scaled only by pianists who possess the keyboard technique to realize the depth of the composer's vision. By those standards, if Uchida isn't the equal of such giants as Arrau, Kempff, and Schnabel, she certainly comes close enough to make this an outstanding release. Her pianissimos are feathery-light; her fortes are as powerful as one might wish, and her trills are analogues of Beethoven's spiritual ideas. She renders Beethoven's full dynamic palette with nuances that make every shading register. Uchida never makes an ugly sound. Her tone remains warm, colorful, and full-bodied. More important, her interpretation encompasses the inward, contemplative slow sections as well as the energetic ones, and she plays Beethoven's contrapuntal passages with a clarity that makes every musical strand count. She's helped by outstanding engineering, too. Not all of the transcendental Beethoven is captured here, but Uchida comes a lot closer than most pianists can aspire to. That alone makes this disc a must-have. -- Dan Davis

asin: B0001AW052 binding: DVD list price: $24.98 USD amazon price: $22.49 USD

This disc presents one of the 20th century's greatest and most distinctive pianists in music of two pianist-composers, Schumann and Beethoven, who were among his most treasured specialties. The playing is fluent, brilliant without ever being flashy, and phrased and accented with a totally unique flavor. Kempff has power to spare, but he uses it with a restraint that heightens its impact. Kempff's style is an attractive blend of intelligence and lyric grace; he is, like Alfred Brendel. a thinking man's pianist, but his joyful plunge into the lighter moments is as significant as his subtle explorations of the music's depths. In this collection, taken from television broadcasts in the 1960s and 1970, Schumann is presented essentially as a brilliant miniaturist, Beethoven as a devotee of larger and deeper forms. Kempff takes the measure of both styles. A bonus presents a less-known but fine pianist, Dino Ciani, in Schumann's Novelette, Op. 21, No. 1 and two numbers from Bartok's "Out of Doors" Suite. --Joe McLellan

author: Ludwig van Beethoven asin: 0769267955 binding: Paperback list price: $18.95 USD amazon price: $18.95 USD

A collection of intermediate/advanced piano pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven.