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

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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: 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.