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

asin: B000OYC3FM binding: Audio CD list price: $16.98 USD amazon price: $16.98 USD

What a beautiful recording! Perhaps the most exciting thing about Lang Lang's playing is that when he plays softly and lyrically, he doesn't sound as if he's holding back; when he opts to stomp and yell, it sounds equally natural. The First Concerto is played with lightness and bounce in the outer movements and is as tuneful as imaginable in the stunning second movement's Largo. The Fourth Concerto is a whole other matter - mature Beethoven - and Lang rises easily to the occasion, playing with potency and handsome tone. The first movement makes us sit and admire his skill, and he is poetic and sensitive in the second movement. It would have been easy for him to run away with the final movement in a blaze of virtuosity, but he sticks to its classical outlines. These are superb performances, and the sonics are gloriously rich. --Robert Levine

asin: B000TJUGQU binding: Audio CD

Label(s): Elite Classics

Composer:
Ludwig van Beethoven

Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat, Op.73 Emperior
1. I. Allegro
2. II. Adagio un poco mosso
3. III. Rondo. Allegro
Claudio Arrau
Royal Concert Gebouw Orchestra
Bernard Haitink

Triple Concerto for Piano, Violin & Cello in C, Op.56
4. I. Allegro
5. II. Largo
6. III. Rondo alia Polacca

Claudio Arrau
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Eliahu Inbal

asin: B00000C2F7 binding: Audio CD list price: $111.98 USD amazon price: $111.98

Claudio Arrau played with seriousness of purpose that could make other pianists seem like dilettantes and with respect for the composer's score that bordered on veneration. He had nothing but scorn for pianists who played the opening of Beethoven's Opus 111 with two hands instead of one because there were fewer risks. If something was technically difficult, Arrau assumed that the composer had written it that way because the difficulties had an expressive value that it was the interpreter's duty to find. Arrau's devotion to Beethoven is memorialized by this budget-priced, 14-CD collection of his recordings, mostly from the 1960s, of the composer's 32 sonatas, five concertos (with Bernard Haitink conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam), and most important sets of variations. His Beethoven is not always successful. His sometimes ponderous seriousness keeps early works, such as the Sonata No. 3 and the Concerto No. 2, from smiling, and his lack of spontaneity makes the whimsy in Sonata No. 26 and the "Diabelli Variations" sound labored. But in the composer's weightiest works, Arrau can produce revelations. Certainly, no one plays Sonata No. 32 better. The first movement sounds like thunder that comes ever closer and the finale's chains of trills, played with exquisite finish and expressive perfection, transport the listener to a higher realm. If Arrau could be single-minded in his devotion to the composer's score, he also believed that music could encompass everything. When Arrau was at his best--as he frequently is in this set--it does. --Stephen Wigler

asin: B0000012YO binding: Audio CD list price: $68.98 USD amazon price: $101.57 USD

Nine CD Box Set, Including the Complete Recording of Beethoven's Sonatas.