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

asin: B000PDCGXQ binding: Audio CD

Tracks:
Robert Schumann KlavierKonzert A-Moll ~~1. Allegro Affettuoso ~~2. Intermezzo (Andantino Grazioso) ~~3. Allegro Vivace ~~~Ludwig van Beethoven Symphonie No. 8 ~~4. Allegro Vivace ~~5. Allegretto Scherzando ~~6. Tempo Di Minuetto ~~7. Allegretto Vivace

asin: B0000064YB binding: Audio CD list price: $8.99 USD amazon price: $11.63 USD

A wizard of technical control since his prodigy days, Kissin simply uses this as a foundation to probe the depths of such core repertory items as the ones on this collection. It takes a truly subtle musicality and grasp to make the endlessly recorded Moonlight sound fresh, but Kissin has the goods, pulling the carpet from underneath and making you really notice, with his unsentimental, steady tempo, how unsettling Beethoven's harmonic fluctuations are in a first movement of startling inwardness. Kissin allows the middle minuet to blossom within the sonata's larger nightscape, while he pushes the finale's cri de coeur to its heaven-storming edge. He likewise traces the late-19th-century gothic labyrinth of Franck's Prelude, Choral et Fugue with an absorbing blend of delicacy and power. But the real highlight of this disc is the gloriously brilliant intensity Kissin brings to the Brahms Paganini Variations. Listen to how he parades a dizzying, dazzling series of moods--from caressing introspection and bone-crunching, steely chords to the giddy cross-rhythms of Book II, Variation 7--to match Brahms's magnitude of invention. This is pianism of the first order. --Thomas May

asin: B000002RMM binding: Audio CD list price: $16.98 USD amazon price: $16.98

Itzhak Perlman, Lynn Harrell, and Vladimir Ashkenazy combine majesty with a splendid sense of flow in the opening movement of the Archduke Trio, and treat the variations of the third movement in the manner of late Beethoven--with an emotive power that is all the more intense for being hushed and stilled. The digital recording, dating from February 1982, is fairly close-miked and dry, but quite acceptable. --Ted Libbey