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

author: Beethoven asin: B000LRYQ5C binding: Digital list price: $3.75 USD amazon price: $3.75 USD

Downloadable sheet music file

asin: B000003EUL binding: Audio CD list price: $8.99 USD amazon price: $10.99 USD

Richter was one of the those great virtuoso egomaniac genius types who was so insecure that he practiced for something like 10 hours a day, even before a scheduled performance. But it wasn't just getting the notes right that he was after. He was looking for the way to somehow get an entire work "into his hands," and trying to figure out the relationships between all of its different parts. That's why his performances--even the very slow one--have such an inevitable sounding organic unity. This performance isn't one of the very slow ones, but it does have that sense of urgency and spontaneity, as though Richter and Leinsdorf were composing as they play. It's one of the great recordings. --David Hurwitz

asin: B00004LCAQ binding: Audio CD list price: $16.98 USD amazon price: $14.58 USD

The relationship between pianist Martha Argerich and the recording studio has always been an on/off affair. Consequently, many of her discs derive from live concert tapings. EMI is doing a great service to the pianist's legion of fans by issuing excellent-sounding live broadcast recordings, like the two concertos contained on this disc. Mozart's C Major Concerto K. 503 is new to Argerich's discography. Her skittish fluidity in the passagework of the outer movements downplays the music's operatic overtones, stressing instead the music's big-boned virtuosic parameters. Occasional patchy tone and unsettled entrances are a small price to pay for Szymon Goldberg's sensitive, well-balanced support at the helm of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. Why are the cadenzas unaccredited (Mozart left none for this work)? Argerich made a studio recording of Beethoven's joyfully brash First Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Giuseppe Sinopoli for DG in the late 1980s. This 1992 live version, however, finds the mercurial virtuoso in more spontaneous, rabble-rousing fettle. At the same time, she conveys more breadth and breathing room in the slow movement. Heinz Wallberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra turn in an alert, yet firmly rooted orchestral framework that supports the soloist without indulging her headstrong tendencies. One might expect a pianist of Argerich's capabilities to let rip in Beethoven's longer, wilder, first-movement cadenza, but she opts instead for the more frequently played shorter one. --Jed Distler

asin: B00001IVOQ binding: Audio CD list price: $11.98 USD amazon price: $11.98

Hands down, this is the recording to own of two of Beethoven's chamber music masterpieces, the Kreutzer and Spring Sonatas. It captures one of classical music's greatest duos--Vladimir Ashkenazy and Itzhak Perlman--at the height of their powers, and the results are glorious, made only better by a great digital remastering. The 1973 recording of the Kreutzer is filled with impassioned playing (particularly in the case of Perlman) and spot-on tonality. The first movement is unbelievably riveting in the duo's capable hands. Spring is slightly more restrained, but just as beautiful. Simply gorgeous. --Jason Verlinde