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

asin: B000N60H9K binding: Audio CD list price: $6.98 USD amazon price: $6.98 USD

"I don't think I've ever heard Bronfman play better." - Gramophone Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1958, Yefim Bronfman immigrated to Israel at the age of thirteen and later to the US, 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 debut 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 US, Europe, and Asia. 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. 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. His discography of over one hundred recordings has won five Grammys and two Grands Prix du Disque. Founded in 1868, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra is Switzerland's oldest symphony orchestra.

author: Beethoven asin: B000LRYPR6 binding: Digital list price: $3.75 USD amazon price: $3.75 USD

Downloadable sheet music file

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The greatest pianist Britain has ever produced and one of the greatest Beethoven interpreters of the last century was Solomon (1902-1988)--he never used his patronymic, Cutner--whose career was cut short by several massive strokes in 1956. He only began to achieve genuine international fame in the early 1950s, and he began his two great Beethoven cycles at that time. He never completed the sonata cycle (the 18 sonatas he managed to complete have been reissued by Testament), but fate was more forgiving about the concertos, two of which were actually completed after the first of Solomon's strokes, when the pianist was partially paralyzed. This release, which pairs Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 (like that which combines Nos. 1 and 2), couples a concerto recorded before the stroke with one made afterward. Both performances are among the finest ever recorded. It is impossible to tell that a man who would never play in public again recorded No. 3. There were (and are) pianists who perform the first and third movements more thunderously, but few who match (and none who surpass) Solomon's sense of drama. Intriguingly, this great classicist eschews Beethoven's own first movement cadenza for Clara Schumann's Romantic alternative, which Solomon had been using since his first performance of the concerto in 1911, at the age of 8. Solomon's performance of the slow movement, while utterly unsentimental, is profoundly moving. The pianist receives a splendid accompaniment from Menges. Little need be said about Solomon's collaboration with the young Andre Cluytens in the Concerto No. 4. In the sheer unobtrusive beauty with which it moves from the heart of the composer to that of the listener, it remains, after 40 years, the finest version of this great piece ever recorded. --Stephen Wigler