Beethoven Baruda Skoda

Philippe Herreweghe’s Beethoven symphonies cycle with the Royal Flemish Orchestra, recorded between 2004 and 2009, belongs to PENTATONE’s most renowned and successful releases. Herreweghe and his orchestra have been widely praised for their lively interpretation, full of clarity. Together, they achieve a historically informed performance while using modern instruments, expanded with natural horns and historical timpani. The excellent sound quality of this recording adds to the extraordinary acoustic sensation. This boxset is now presented in a new, convenient clamshell design.

The Afflatus Quartet’s second album features classical repertoire by Beethoven and Mozart. The distinguished ensemble members create a rich, full sound on this wonderful disc…

In 2015, pianist Jonathan Biss initiated the Beethoven/5 commissioning project with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and more than fifteen other orchestras, resulting in a groundbreaking collaboration over nine years. The project yielded five extraordinary new piano works by some of today's most significant composers, responding to Beethoven's own concerti. Volume Two sees "City Stanzas," written by British composer Sally Beamish to pair with Beethoven's first piano concerto, marking a thematic departure from Beamish's earlier works often inspired by nature.

Daniel Barenboim's performances of these three sonatas are quite simply flawless. Each movement of each sonata is played exactly as it it should be, both technically and artistically. I cannot imagine more intellectually and emotionally satisfying performances of these works. If you have come to regard these sonatas as over-played "warhorses" listen to this CD and enjoy them as the masterpieces which they truly are.

If you take it for granted that Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was the greatest pianist of the twentieth century and that his performances of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto were the greatest of the twentieth century, then you'll probably want to pick up this disc containing Michelangeli's fabled May 29, 1957, performance in Prague with Vaclav Smetacek and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Although Smetacek is not the deepest, the greatest, or the most sympathetic accompanist Michelangeli ever had, and although the Prague players are not always quite on their best behavior, Michelangeli is as he always is in this work: absolutely definite.

Following their previous two volumes of Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas, Antje Weithaas and Dénes Várjon now release the third volume on our partner label CAvi. This was a long-held wish of renowned violinist Antje Weithaas, who says “Just once in my lifetime, I wanted to record Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas as a cycle!”. Together with the versatile Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon, she recorded the cycle not in the chronologial order but thematically. Their third and final album spans an arc from the first to the last violin sonatas, as well as Sonata No. 5 and 6, and collects the composer’s more lyrical works.

Carl Meisl's play The Consecration of the House, to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, was performed in Vienna on October 3, 1822 on the occasion of the reopening of the Theater in der Josefstadt. Its theme is the reawakening of art after times of crisis.

For anyone who is a devotee of Otto Klemperer’s readings of the Beethoven Symphonies, they will not be disappointed with much of what is on offer here. In the main, these are weighty and highly-charged performances, with a certain grandeur…Horst gives us monumental, full-blooded and noble readings of these symphonies.

This new release from MDG presents Beethoven's 2nd and 5th symphonies in Hummel's transcriptions for chamber ensemble, performed here by ensemble1800berlin. Accurately historically informed and on instruments of Beethoven's time, the ensemble1800berlin presents these extraordinary treasures with unmistakable joy in making music, but also with respect for the incomparable original and the ingenious arrangement. A fascinating testimony to the times - through Hummel's chamber music glasses a completely new, exciting view of Beethoven and his time!