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

asin: B00004T92Y binding: Audio CD list price: $31.98 USD amazon price: $31.98 USD

Along with Marston's invaluable reissue of Arrau's early studio recordings, these radio broadcasts from the late 1930s add to our knowledge of one of the century's greats. The younger Arrau was a more overtly virtuosic pianist than the later, more philosophical one on his Philips recordings, but the seriousness of his interpretive approach shines through. The Beethoven sonatas, for example, are weightier in his later recordings, but we can still revel in his unique depth of tone and refusal to settle for surface glitter, a rare trait in a virtuoso of Arrau's technical accomplishments. His Chopin, too, while still in the Germanic tradition, has more air and lightness. The Liszt solo pieces are played with transcendent beauty. He makes light of the Liszt Concerto's difficulties, but it's roughly recorded and doesn't match his mid-1950s version with Eugene Ormandy on Sony. Despite some noisy originals, most tracks have surprisingly fresh and vital sound. An important release. --Dan Davis

asin: B00005OR5P binding: Audio CD list price: $18.98 USD amazon price: $18.98

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

asin: B00005R5H9 binding: DVD list price: $24.99 USD amazon price: $24.99

Claudio Abbado conducts the Berlin Philharmonic in an evening of Beethoven. The program opens with soloist Mikhail Pletnev's performance of "Concerto No. 2 for Piano" and continues with Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony." Recorded during the Philharmonic's tenth European Concert, this live performance features guest artists from around the globe, including Karita Mattila, Violeta Urmana, Thomas Moser and Eike-Wilm Schulte.

asin: B00049QOGG binding: Audio CD list price: $8.99 USD amazon price: $8.98 USD

First the good news, though it's hardly new: Murray Perahia is a marvelous pianist. His performance of the Beethoven Sonata must be one of the best on record. Everything about it is "right": the sound is beautiful, with an extraordinary variety of touch, color and nuance; the rhythm is flexible but steady, the phrasing perfect; tempo and mood changes are subtle and poised, transitions balanced. The elusive first movement is wonderfully poetic, the Scherzo sparkles without being hectic, the slow movement is deeply expressive (truly "yearning," as Beethoven indicates), and melts naturally into the brilliant buoyancy of the Finale, ending in a burst of triumphant glory. Perahia uses a new edition of the Beethoven sonatas that he is preparing, but the innovations seem to be slight. The news about Op. 127 is less good. Composers have traditionally used the string quartet, that incomparably intimate combination, to express their inmost thoughts and feelings. Arranged as a "symphony" it loses its emotionally concentrated, inward, personal character. Doubling the parts and adding a bass makes the texture bottom-heavy, thick and muddy; moreover, it creates intonational problems for the players and restricts their freedom and spontaneity. In short, nothing is gained and much is lost in the transformation. This performance of Op. 127, though careful and conscientious, illustrates all these defects. The grand, majestic first movement becomes bombastic, the second dense and heavy; the Scherzo is too fast for clarity, aggressive rather than humorous, the Finale loses its gracious charm. Throughout, the balance is poor, the dynamic contrast excessive, with lots of whispering that seems like a failed attempt to preserve the transparency of the original. Of course one cannot gain an impression of Perahia the maestro on the basis of this disc, but one might suspect that this work was chosen--indeed created--for his conducting debut because it is both a masterpiece and a novelty. --Edith Eisler