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

author: Beethoven asin: 0757908160 binding: Paperback list price: $12.95 USD amazon price: $12.95

Arranged for Late Intermediate Piano Book & CD. Volume four of this series includes 12 original piano works by Beethoven. Donald Beattie, founder and president of The Beethoven Society for Pianists, along with his wife Delayna, has selected nine Bagatelles from Beethoven's opus 33, 119, and 126, two Rondos, and Klavierstuck in B Minor WoO61. There is an extensive preface describing Beethoven's life and work, performance suggestions on each piece, and a section exclusive to this series entitled "Beethoven as Our Teacher" with historical facts and quotes from great composers and artists of history

asin: B00004UAOE binding: Audio CD list price: $17.98 USD amazon price: $17.98

This two-disc set commemorates the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont by several distinguished European musicians, including violinist Adolf Busch; his brother, cellist Herman Busch; and his son-in-law, pianist Rudolf Serkin. Marlboro, a unique community of artists of different generations and backgrounds who inspire and teach one another, has opened the world of chamber music to many young musicians and become a breeding ground for fledgling ensembles. Many of the participants on this recording are now renowned soloists, chamber musicians, and orchestra principals. And the playing is fabulous. In the Beethoven Concerto, Serkin plays with a beautiful sound, great expressiveness, and freedom, taking all the time in the world to caress every note and nuance; his transitions are miracles of poise, his climaxes are grand. In the slow movement, a supplicant pleads with a stern deity; in the finale, humanity's joy of life is restored. Schneider's conducting is sympathetic, but not always synchronized with the soloist. Serkin's son Peter conducts the Choral Fantasy, a piece hastily written for a special occasion and its performing forces, not unlike those at Marlboro. Together with its message of musical uplift (no text is included), this makes it singularly appropriate for the Festival, though with its bombastic beginning and somewhat trite Theme and Variations, it depends on the performers' enthusiasm to make it work. The second disc features the strings and winds. Dvorák's Quintet Op. 77, an early work despite the late opus number, adds a bass to the string quartet, enhancing the sonority and allowing the cellist free use of the upper register. The performance, which includes the second movement Dvorák later removed and recast as an orchestral Nocturne, is beautiful, making the most of the work's youthful exuberance and lovely Bohemian melodies, and almost concealing the composer's still imperfect command of developing his material. By contrast, Janácek wrote his wind sextet Youth when he was 70, at the peak of his mature skill, yet it, too, has an amazingly fresh, buoyant vitality. Vigorous, mournful, spooky, lyrical--its mercurial moods and beguiling melodies make it irresistible, and the performance is terrific. --Edith Eisler

author: Beethoven asin: B000LRYPOY binding: Digital list price: $5.95 USD amazon price: $5.95 USD

Downloadable sheet music file

asin: B0000026GN binding: Audio CD list price: $31.98 USD amazon price: $31.98 USD

These are among the finest modern recordings of Beethoven's Cello Sonatas. The two players are well matched, as they should be in this music, which is just as demanding for the pianist as for the cellist, if not more so. They don't try to differentiate stylistically among early, middle, and late sonatas. They play them all in a large scale, concert-hall manner, which actually suits all of them very well. Unfortunately, in reducing this recording to two CDs, the producers have dropped one set of Variations, which was recorded. What is present, though, is choice. --Leslie Gerber