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

author: Ludwig van Beethoven asin: 1596150025 binding: Paperback list price: $34.98 USD amazon price: $34.98 USD

Though published later, the Concerto No. 2 was actually the first of Beethoven's concerti to be written, and displays an almost Mozartian style, with a solo part that is exciting and beautiful but accessible to less advanced players. Technically it is the easiest Beethoven concerto to master. Includes a high-quality printed music score and a compact disc containing a complete version with soloist, in split-channel stereo (soloist on the right channel); then a second version in full stereo of the orchestral accompaniment, minus the soloist. Performed by David Syme, piano. Accompaniment: Stuttgart Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Emil Kahn.

asin: B000ETQSD0 binding: Audio CD list price: $21.98 USD amazon price: $21.98 USD

Bernard Haitink is not usually thought of as an eminent Beethoven conductor, but this 7th Symphony is perhaps his best-recorded performance of any of the nine. Possibly due to the live concert setting, sparks fly as Haitink induces plenty of rhythmic drive and power, along with fabulous playing by an energized LSO, especially the important winds. His balanced, proportionate approach falls midway between the work's romanticism and its classical framework, avoiding excesses. If the second movement doesn't reach the depth of feeling others strike, it's because Haitink plays it as the flowing Allegretto it is, and not as a slow funeral march. His rip-roaring final movement avoids the runaway train others have evoked, but it's still bursting with vigor, as Beethoven intended. The substantial filler is the Triple Concerto, often looked down upon as inferior Beethoven, but so full of gorgeous melodies and varied timbres of the solo piano, violin, and cello that it's become one of my guilty pleasures, especially as done here in a reading that emphasizes the work's lyricism. --Dan Davis

asin: B000001K4G binding: Audio CD list price: $10.98 USD amazon price: $10.98 USD

Even Alfred Brendel may not approve of the Beethoven performances heard on these discs. Brendel is several decades older and wiser now, and may well find these products of his relative youth as callow as I do. The magnificent Diabelli Variations, one of Beethoven's greatest compositions, is trivialized by this undercharacterized playing, which lets so many important moments go by without saying anything special about them. It's worth the extra money to spring for a great performance of this music, like Richter on Praga PR 254 023 or Oelbaum on Bridge BCD 9010. The smaller pieces also sound bland. Even at a low price this set is no great bargain. --Leslie Gerber

asin: B00000GV4A binding: Audio CD list price: $11.98 USD amazon price: $11.98

As a preteen, Kissin had a technique most pianists would envy. His solo recordings since have revealed a predilection for Schumann's music, each showing signs of greater interpretive maturity. Now, he uses a combination of great abandon and even greater control to produce a stunning performance of Kreisleriana. The piece is one of the last of Schumann's quixotically titled piano works consisting of generously scaled, poetic movements (eight, in this case) in which technical prowess is absolutely necessary in order to clarify the textures but hardly sufficient to deliver the full expressiveness of this lovely music. Busoni's virtuosic Bach transcription is played with great imagination, and Beethoven's delightful Op. 129 is as wittily performed as it is written. --Paul Turok