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

asin: B00000IKJR binding: Audio CD list price: $10.98 USD amazon price: $11.31 USD

Classical music for children has become a genre unto itself, founded on the premise of brain-power building and all too often steering parental buyers away from the full-blown versions of particular compositions toward reorchestrated renditions. It's frequently the case that a brain-tickling classical set will be played on digital keyboards, with softened tonal colors and shapes. Not so with this excellent Beethoven set. Recognized ensembles take up the music, from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to the New York Chamber Symphony to the Oxford String Quartet and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. The emphasis is on Beethoven's gentler side, from the poetic "Für Elise" for solo piano to the bucolic settings portrayed in the two selections from Beethoven's Symphony No. 6. This is neither a synapse-popping set of virtuoso performances nor an altered look at Beethoven, but it is a well-selected, well-programmed set of works that will ease a child's brain into the works at hand. --Andrew Bartlett

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

asin: B000087F5C binding: DVD list price: $24.98 USD amazon price: $22.49 USD

It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to assemble a better group of musicians to perform Beethoven's Triple Concerto and Choral Fantasy. Daniel Barenboim has been so busy conducting the world's top orchestras and opera companies that there is a danger of forgetting what an excellent pianist he is. He conducts both of these works from the keyboard, as Beethoven would have expected, engaging in chamber music-like dialogue in the concerto and creating a sense of impromptu in the Fantasy's long piano solo, which Beethoven wrote for himself and partly improvised at the first performance. Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma are sensitive, alert, and technically superb partners. The music is not Beethoven's most familiar, but it is absolutely charming. The concerto is appealing in its melodic material and the intricate interactions among the soloists and orchestra. The Choral Fantasy features a long piano solo that Beethoven wrote for himself, plus a choral melody that sounds like a preliminary sketch for the last movement of his Ninth Symphony. Both works pose unusual balance challenges, to which Barenboim and the recording engineers rise impressively. --Joe McLellan

asin: B000003XTU binding: Audio CD list price: $16.99 USD amazon price: $90.15 USD

Glenn Gould's playing is so treasured that CD publishers have been looking for anything of his they can find. These treasures, dredged from the CBC archives and Gould's own collection, offer some fresh material. The Beethoven trios, broadcast in 1954, don't sound great, but they are fine performances and show Gould as a fine chamber music collaborator. The piano pieces, from 1952, sound somewhat better and are played straightforwardly, without the eccentric ideas that crept into Gould's playing later in his career. This disc is probably for Gould fans only, but it should delight them. --Leslie Gerber