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

asin: B0002W3EDG binding: Audio CD list price: $16.99 USD amazon price: $26.88 USD

Here's an inspired appendage to the Aimard-Harnoncourt set of the Beethoven Piano Concertos. When new, the Triple Concerto, combining three solo instruments with orchestra, was considered a bold new type of concerto. That's how it's played here. The solo trio blends nicely with the orchestra, giving the work a chamber music dimension. Once past the slow introduction, Harnoncourt conducts a vigorous, almost rhapsodic performance, with great forward momentum. But the honors go to the outstanding soloists. Aimard etches the piano line with exceptional clarity, Hagen, the cellist of the Hagen Quartet, plays with gorgeous tone, while violinist Zehetmair, who also leads a quartet bearing his name, almost steals the show through his agile playing and phrasing that cuts to the heart of the music. I know of no better performance of this work. The Choral Fantasy too comes off as more than a weird combination of a solo piano fantasia and a choral sketch for the last movement of the Ninth Symphony. And pianist and orchestra play the daylights out of the quirky Rondo in B-flat major. --Dan Davis

asin: B000AMPZNU binding: Audio CD list price: $6.98 USD amazon price: $6.98 USD

Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1958, Yefim Bronfman emigrated to Israel at the age of 13 and later to the U.S., where he pursued his training at the Juilliard School and the Marlboro and Curtis Institutes under Rudolf Serkin, Rudolf Firkusny and Leon Fleisher. Bronfman celebrated his international début in 1975, accompanied by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Zubin Mehta. He soon acquired an excellent reputation as a pianist on the stages of the world's major concert halls. Highlights of recent years include concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam and the Vienna Philharmonic. Yefim Bronfman also gives regular piano recitals in the leading concert halls of the United States, Europe and the Far East. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with the Emerson, Cleveland, Guarneri and Juilliard Quartets. Other! long-term musical partners include Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Lynn Harrell, Shlomo Mintz and Pinchas Zukerman. Yefim Bronfman became an American citizen in 1989. Born in 1936, American conductor David Zinman has risen to the pinnacle of his career in the last decade. After bringing the Baltimore Symphony to major status, he became musical director of the Aspen Music Festival and then took the helm of Zurich's beloved Tonhalle Orchestra. Zinman's discography of some 100 recordings have won five Grammys and two Grands Prix du Disque. Founded in 1868, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra is Switzerland's oldest symphony orchestra. Today it gives over 90 concerts each season featuring more than 50 different programs with the world's leading conductors and solo artists. David Zinman sees Piano Concerto No. 3 - the only one in a minor key - as a kind of "Eroica" for piano and orchestra. Just as Beethoven opened the door to an entirely new symphonic world with his third symphony, the Eroica, he also broke new ground with his third piano concerto. For Yefim Bronfman, the Fourth is the concerto "with the broadest emotional spectrum, and at the same time possibly the most dramati."

asin: B0000B383B binding: Audio CD list price: $17.95 USD amazon price: $17.95 USD

Includes Symphony NO. 5 and Piano Concerto No. 4. The work of Ludwig van Beethoven has been called the culmination of the Classical era or the wellspring of the Romantic era in European music. Historians today see him as the heir of Haydn and Mozart, carrying their musical discoveries to a new level of complexity and integration. No composer in the nineteenth century could aspire to the creation of a symphony without taking into account the example of Beethoven. In his Symphony No. 5, Beethoven achieved an unprecedented degree of unity and coherence through the use of a short musical phrase called a "movite" which recurs a number of times throughout the piece. In Piano Concerto No. 4, Beethoven breaks with tradition by beginning with an understated piano solo rather than a substantial orchestral introduction. Each CD package includes two CDs. The first, a Musical Performance Disk, features the top performers and symphony orchestras in the world, performing the best-loved music from the classical music Greats. Accompanying the Musical Performance Disc is a Conductor's Guide on a separate CD. Here, Maestro Gerard Schwarz discusses the musical performances in depth--movement by movement, section by section--using examples from the recorded performances. There's no better, more enjoyable way to get a basic education in classical music. You'll also receive a 16-page printed copy of Concert Notes, featuring the unique Music Disc Timeline, which is written to synchronize with the elapsed time display of your CD player. As you play the music on the Performance Disc, you can see exactly where the things that Maestro Schwarz discussed take place in the music. It's like looking into the score--but you don't have to know how to read music!

author: Beethoven asin: B000LRYPS0 binding: Digital list price: $2.75 USD amazon price: $2.75 USD

Downloadable sheet music file

author: Ludwig van Beethoven asin: 0486438058 binding: Paperback list price: $17.95 USD amazon price: $17.95 USD

For 200 years, Beethoven's symphonies have been at the core of the classical repertoire, and they remain among the most important works of art in any medium. These elegant four-hand versions of Beethoven's masterpieces have long been favorites of duet performers. This volume features his final 4 symphonies.