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

asin: B00000K4FL binding: Audio CD list price: $11.98 USD amazon price: $13.48 USD

More than 70 years have passed since the Cortot-Thibaud-Casals trio waxed the Schubert B flat and Beethoven Archduke trios. Both recordings were hailed as classics in the early days of electrical recording and have enjoyed numerous incarnations on LP and CD. Even if you already own these performances, you honestly haven't heard them until you experience these new restorations. The effect is not unlike washing your eyeglasses. All the surface snap, crackle, and swish has been tamed, but more room tone emerges along with long-buried, intermingling overtones from all three instruments. There's more tempo fluctuation than modern ears may be accustomed to, along with Thibaud's slippery portamentos. Yet these devices are channeled toward specific expressive ends. Mannered they may seem, but indulgent, never. And listeners used to Cortot's freewheeling approach to solo repertoire will be surprised at how much he behaves himself in a chamber music context. Write, petition, call, beg, cajole, do anything to induce EMI to bring out the remainder of this trio's recorded output in equally amazing transfers. --Jed Distler

asin: B0000035Q2 binding: Audio CD list price: $11.98 USD amazon price: $11.98

This disc is an absolute must for anyone who wants every recording Ashkenazy has ever made, and for no one else. He recorded it in East Germany in 1957, and it has never been available outside of that country before. Ashkenazy was probably still in his teens when he played these performances, which explains his relatively callow playing of the profound Sonata No. 32. The "Waldstein" is a more acceptable performance, but as a listening experience it is ruined by the way the pitch varies through much of the first movement. Fortunately for Ashkenazy's admirers, his more recent recordings of these sonatas are available, making this opportunistic reissue thoroughly unnecessary. --Leslie Gerber