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

author: Kenneth O. Drake asin: 0253213827 binding: Paperback list price: $24.95 USD amazon price: $24.95 USD

Drake groups the Beethoven piano sonatas according to their musical qualities, rather than their chronology. He explores the interpretive implications of rhythm, dynamics, slurs, harmonic effects, and melodic development and identifies specific measures where Beethoven skillfully employs these compositional devices.

asin: B000BC8T8C binding: Audio CD list price: $29.98 USD amazon price: $79.56 USD

Have you ever wished to be present as a great instrumentalist teaches gifted pupils? Sony's set of Alfred Cortot's Master Classes can satisfy that fantasy, as well as provide insightful performances of works (and excerpts of works) including some Cortot never recorded, and hearing him expound on them from a performer's point of view. It's possible thanks to an engineering student who taped many of Cortot's classes in the late 1950s and Murray Perahia, who tracked down the tapes and produced this invaluable set. Don't understand French? Not to worry--French texts and English translations of Cortot's remarks are provided. We also hear Cortot playing with spontaneity and captivating spur-of-the-moment impetuousness, if also with rather more wrong notes than the fastidious would like. The inevitable frustration of wanting him to play an entire lengthy work soon gives way to appreciation for his insights and the beauties of the excerpts he's highlighting. Those insights include technical points like pedaling, rhythm, and touch. But more often he's teaching a work's expressive content. He'll relate a Beethoven Sonata to a love story or the way Chopin's Ballades reflect the Adam Mieckicwicz poems said to inspire them. There's Bach, Mozart, and Schumann here too. Cortot's main point, the lesson that pervades these discs, is one all aspiring artists need to absorb: "Technique can never really be separated from musical expression." This set is must for pianophiles, students, and admirers of one of the last century's greatest artists. --Dan Davis

asin: B000A3VTTI binding: DVD list price: $39.98 USD amazon price: $24.97 USD

• A terrific collection of five great piano concertos performed by Maurizio Pollini, one of the 20th centuries great virtuosos. • Filmed with the Vienna Philharmonic in the 1970s at the beautiful Musikverein in Vienna. • Karl Böhm conducts the Beethoven and Mozart concertos, while Claudio Abbado reads the Brahms. TRACK LIST DVD1: Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3, op 37 Piano Concerto No. 5, op 73 "Emperor" Vienna Philharmonic Karl Böhm, conductor DVD2: Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 19, KV 459 Piano Concerto No. 23, KV 488 Vienna Philharmonic Karl Böhm, conductor Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, op. 83 Vienna Philharmonic Claudio Abbado, conductor