Beethoven Baruda Skoda

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.

Every man's death diminishes us all, but the death of a man so close to completing his greatest achievement and the summation of his life's work diminishes us all greatly – very, very greatly. When Emil Gilels died in 1985, he had completed recordings of most but not all of Beethoven's piano sonatas, released here in a nine-disc set. What's here is unimaginably good: superlative recordings of 27 of the 32 canonical sonatas, including the "Pathétique," "Moonlight," "Waldstein," "Appassionata," "Les Adieux," and the majestic "Hammerklavier," plus the two early "Electoral" Sonatas and the mighty Eroica Variations. What's missing is unimaginably priceless: five of the canonical sonatas, including the first and – horror vacui – the last. But still, for what there is, we must be grateful. Beyond all argument one of the great pianists of the twentieth century, Gilels the Soviet super virtuoso had slowly mellowed and ripened over his long career, and when he began recording the sonatas in 1972, his interpretations had matured and deepened while his superlative technique remained gloriously intact straight through to the last recordings of his final year.

"Hope Amid Tears," the new album by Yo-Yo Ma together with his friend and pianist Emanuel Ax, presents Beethoven’s five sonatas for cello and piano in the order in which they were composed, tracing an important arc in Beethoven’s development and approach as a composer. Joining them are Beethoven’s three sets of variations for cello and piano.

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!

Juliette Hurel's 2013 album on Naïve explores pieces for flute and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert, evoking the period between Classicism and early Romanticism. Perhaps the subtlest work of the program is Beethoven's Flute Sonata in B flat major, WoO A4, written in 1790 and fashioned under the influence of Haydn. Its sunny disposition and light textures are periodically interrupted by unexpected key changes and sudden digressions into the minor, characteristics that anticipate Beethoven's later development and mark it as a transitional work. His Serenade for flute and piano, Op. 41, is an arrangement of the Serenade for flute, violin, and viola, Op. 25, and it has a similar, if sometimes deceptive, air of Classical simplicity, which is all the more apparent because of the brevity of the movements. Only Schubert's Variations on a Theme from Die schöne Müllerin is unequivocally Romantic, and its sudden changes of mood and key make it the most fascinating piece on the disc.

Igor Levit - the recent recipient of the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s “Instrumentalist of the Year”- has now completed the recording of all 32 sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven. In September 2019 this mammoth studio-recording project will finally be released and leads the way for important new releases on Sony Classical for Beethoven’s 250-year anniversary.

This was to be the end of the line for Italian word-setting by Viennese composers: once the confident sentiments that belonged to the poet Metastasio's opera seria felt the chill and threatening wind of Enlightenment and Revolution, their time was up. Even we, for the most part, prefer to remember the German-speaking Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn. So it is good to be reminded of their responses to the Italian muse (usually as part of their craft-learning student work) in this particularly well-cast recital. Central Europe, in the person of Andras Schiff meets Italy, in Cecilia Bartoli, to delightful, often revelatory effect.

These performances of the Beethoven symphonies and overtures seek to perform these masterpieces employing the same instrumentation, acoustics and timing that Beethoven heard (when he could) and used. Thus we are placed in hearing this music the way its composer wanted us to hear it.