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

author: BEETHOVEN L asin: 063409906X binding: Paperback list price: $9.95 USD amazon price: $9.95 USD

Schirmer Performance Editions are designed for piano students and their teachers as well as for professional pianists. Pedagogical in nature, these editions offer insightful interpretive suggestions, pertinent fingering, and historical and stylistic commentary. Prepared by renowned artists/teachers, these publications provide an accurate, well-informed score resource for pianists. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is renowned for his large-scale, innovative piano sonatas and concertos, and these works hold a prominent and lasting place in the concert repertoire. Yet nestled beneath the larger works for which he is most often lauded lies a vast collection of short piano solos that he crafted throughout his career. These miniatures often display the same careful writing and attention to detail as his longer works. Some were actually intended as pedagogical studies; many derive their style from the popular dance music of the period and reflect Beethoven's love of simple, everyday pleasures. Editor and recording artist: Matthew Edwards

asin: B000EAV6BS binding: Audio CD list price: $16.98 USD amazon price: $30.71 USD

Beethoven's last three piano sonatas have long been regarded as the Mt. Everest of the form, heights that can be scaled only by pianists who possess the keyboard technique to realize the depth of the composer's vision. By those standards, if Uchida isn't the equal of such giants as Arrau, Kempff, and Schnabel, she certainly comes close enough to make this an outstanding release. Her pianissimos are feathery-light; her fortes are as powerful as one might wish, and her trills are analogues of Beethoven's spiritual ideas. She renders Beethoven's full dynamic palette with nuances that make every shading register. Uchida never makes an ugly sound. Her tone remains warm, colorful, and full-bodied. More important, her interpretation encompasses the inward, contemplative slow sections as well as the energetic ones, and she plays Beethoven's contrapuntal passages with a clarity that makes every musical strand count. She's helped by outstanding engineering, too. Not all of the transcendental Beethoven is captured here, but Uchida comes a lot closer than most pianists can aspire to. That alone makes this disc a must-have. -- Dan Davis