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

author: Ludwig van Beethoven asin: 0486284425 binding: Paperback list price: $14.95 USD amazon price: $11.66 USD

Features 2 widely performed concertos in authoritative 2-piano playing editions edited by Franz Kullak.

asin: B00004LCAQ binding: Audio CD list price: $16.98 USD amazon price: $14.58 USD

The relationship between pianist Martha Argerich and the recording studio has always been an on/off affair. Consequently, many of her discs derive from live concert tapings. EMI is doing a great service to the pianist's legion of fans by issuing excellent-sounding live broadcast recordings, like the two concertos contained on this disc. Mozart's C Major Concerto K. 503 is new to Argerich's discography. Her skittish fluidity in the passagework of the outer movements downplays the music's operatic overtones, stressing instead the music's big-boned virtuosic parameters. Occasional patchy tone and unsettled entrances are a small price to pay for Szymon Goldberg's sensitive, well-balanced support at the helm of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. Why are the cadenzas unaccredited (Mozart left none for this work)? Argerich made a studio recording of Beethoven's joyfully brash First Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Giuseppe Sinopoli for DG in the late 1980s. This 1992 live version, however, finds the mercurial virtuoso in more spontaneous, rabble-rousing fettle. At the same time, she conveys more breadth and breathing room in the slow movement. Heinz Wallberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra turn in an alert, yet firmly rooted orchestral framework that supports the soloist without indulging her headstrong tendencies. One might expect a pianist of Argerich's capabilities to let rip in Beethoven's longer, wilder, first-movement cadenza, but she opts instead for the more frequently played shorter one. --Jed Distler

asin: B00004YA0S binding: Audio CD list price: $62.98 USD amazon price: $55.50 USD

Otto Klemperer's Beethoven is one of the towering achievements in the history of recordings. By today's standards, these performances are hopelessly old-fashioned: dark, heavy, and frequently very slow. But they are also the grandest, most unsentimental, most purposeful versions in the catalog. In addition, the relatively slow tempos (only in the fast movements--the slow ones are pretty swift) and forward wind balance permit more detail to be heard than in most original-instrument performances. At budget price and with the entire piano concerto cycle thrown in for good measure, this is greatness incarnate. --David Hurwitz