Beethoven Baruda Skoda

There's a tendency on the part of some performers to play Beethoven's First and Second Piano Concertos as if they were really by Mozart–all elegance, poise, and refinement. Happily, Boris Berezovsky finds the Beethovenian fire burning beneath the Mozartian surface. Right from his vibrant entrance in Concerto No. 1, Berezovsky plays with fierce energy (despite his generally light touch) and a clearly discernible enjoyment. This is matched Thomas Dausgaard's equally electric reading of the orchestral part, which in many ways reminds me of the classic Szell/Fleisher recording. Of course the small-scale sound of the 38-member Swedish Chamber Orchestra cannot possibly equal the full sonority of the Cleveland Orchestra in its heyday, but it's remarkable how Szell's clear textures and crisp articulation match Dausgaard's, who, by the way, is using the new Barenreiter editions. Berezovsky seems to be of like mind with Fleisher, at least terms of his singing tone and mercurial style.

The nine-time GRAMMY Award-winning Emerson String Quartet has firmly established its authority in interpreting Beethoven’s string quartets since its first Beethoven Cycle performed in 1980 through its complete recording of his quartets on Deutsche Grammophon which won a 1998 GRAMMY Award.

These are hardly the Hagen Quartett's first recordings of Beethoven's quartets. The group made its first Beethoven recordings back in 1997 with the Fugue for String Quartet, Op. 137, and the original version of Opus 18/6 for DG's Complete Beethoven Edition. But those early recordings, while breathtakingly good, cannot compare with later recordings of Beethoven's canonical quartets, climaxing with this coupling of Opus 127 and Opus 132, except in the sense that the same excellent ensemble made all of them.

This is the second two-CD set of Beethoven's ten sonatas for piano and violin performed by violinist Henryk Szeryng and pianist Ingrid Haebler. It includes Beethoven's final five works in this form, including the three sonatas of opus 30, the opus 47 sonata, and the opus 96 sonata.

Beethoven wrote ten sonatas for piano and violin, the best known of which are the "Spring" and the "Kreutzer" sonatas. The fame of these two works has tended to result in neglect of the remaining sonatas. This is unfortunate because Beethoven's remaining eight sonatas for piano and violin include much great music. The set of 10 works is of an appropriate size to warrant exploration of the entire group for those with a passion for the violin or for Beethoven. It includes an appealing mix of familiar and unfamiliar music.

Le pianiste italien Christian Leotta nous revient avec le volume 3 de son intégrale des 32 sonates pour piano de Beethoven. Il a fait de ce corpus une spécialité. Ce CD double contient notamment les sonates pour piano No. 17 en ré mineur op. 31 No. 2 “ La Tempête” et la No. 31 en la bémol majeur op. 110, ainsi que quelques sonates des premiers opus.

The release of Bernard Haitink's new cycle of the Beethoven symphonies was one of the most talked about classical events of 2006. Over recent years many people had questioned whether another complete set of Beethoven's symphonies would ever be recorded. But Haitink's revelatory recordings have demonstrated why fresh new interpretations of Beethoven's music are so important and why the composer's music is still so relevant today.