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

asin: B000001HCQ binding: Audio CD list price: $6.98 USD amazon price: $6.98

This live Appassionata, from a Moscow recital of 1960, is one of the most thrilling piano performances ever recorded. Sviatoslav Richter fills every moment of the first movement with intense drama, creates the illusion of total repose in the central variations, and then takes off in the finale with an exhibition of musical virtuosity and ever-increasing tension that becomes almost unbearably intense (and unbelievably fast and accurate). The studio Pathétique is quite fine, and the Fantasy (sung in Russian!) well performed by all but still rather quaint in its effect. But don't miss that Appassionata! --Leslie Gerber

asin: B0001AW052 binding: DVD list price: $24.98 USD amazon price: $22.49 USD

This disc presents one of the 20th century's greatest and most distinctive pianists in music of two pianist-composers, Schumann and Beethoven, who were among his most treasured specialties. The playing is fluent, brilliant without ever being flashy, and phrased and accented with a totally unique flavor. Kempff has power to spare, but he uses it with a restraint that heightens its impact. Kempff's style is an attractive blend of intelligence and lyric grace; he is, like Alfred Brendel. a thinking man's pianist, but his joyful plunge into the lighter moments is as significant as his subtle explorations of the music's depths. In this collection, taken from television broadcasts in the 1960s and 1970, Schumann is presented essentially as a brilliant miniaturist, Beethoven as a devotee of larger and deeper forms. Kempff takes the measure of both styles. A bonus presents a less-known but fine pianist, Dino Ciani, in Schumann's Novelette, Op. 21, No. 1 and two numbers from Bartok's "Out of Doors" Suite. --Joe McLellan