Buchet Beethoven: Leyenda y Realidad

The wisdom of experience and the infirmities of age lie perhaps too heavy on the Borodin Quartet's set of Beethoven's early quartets. There is no denying that the Borodin know exactly what to do with the music. Their balances are exemplary, their tempos are ideal, and their phrasing is supremely expressive. And there is no denying that the Borodin love deeply every note of the music.

The Tokyo String Quartet is one of the world's leading interpreters of Beethoven, and although its 1993 RCA release of the complete string quartets is one of the most admired of modern digital sets, the ensemble offers a refreshed presentation of the late string quartets on this 2010 triple SACD package from Harmonia Mundi. This release follows albums of Beethoven's early and middle quartets, issued by the group between 2005 and 2009, and while the Tokyo's personnel differs from past lineups, the group has maintained great consistency of tone, superb technique, and refined expression since its founding in 1969.

This set is the third and last volume of François-Frédéric Guy’s complete recording of the Beethoven sonatas. In addition to the first three (op.2), it contains the late sonatas, including the celebrated ‘Hammerklavier’. This sonata is not only one of the cornerstones of the cycle, but also a key work in François-Frédéric Guy’s personal musical trajectory; this is the third time he has recorded it. François-Frédéric Guy chose to record the entire series live, in the course of a series of concerts at the Arsenal de Metz, France. He firmly believes that this method, in direct contact with an audience, is the best way to represent his relationship with the sonatas and the interpretation of them he wishes to project.

Beethoven has always lain at the heart of François-Frédéric Guy’s musical endeavours, from his first disc of the ‘Hammerklavier’ op. 106 on harmonia mundi in the 1990s, which revealed him as one of the future great pianists of his generation, to his set of the concertos conducted by Philippe Jordan and a second version of the ‘Hammerklavier’. In 2008 the festival Le Printemps des Arts de Monaco offered him the opportunity of performing a complete cycle of the Beethoven sonatas over a series of concerts in a single week, an experience repeated at the Cité de la Musique in Paris in 2009. A new complete cycle in concert, begun at the Arsenal de Metz in December 2009, will be completed in 2012.

The Cypress String Quartet, based out of San Francisco, CA, has been working on a series of recordings of the complete string quartets of Beethoven, with the quartet's first violinist, Cecily Ward, listed as producer of the recordings. This set of the op. 18 quartets fills out their recorded survey. Interestingly, the quartet essentially went in "reverse order" with respect to issuing their recordings, in that the op. 18 quartets are, of course, the earliest of the Beethoven quartets, but this 2-CD set is the last of the Cypress Quartet's recordings of the cycle to be issued. Their album of the late quartets was first, and the album of the middle quartets was, fittingly, in the middle.

Lang Lang delivers his first-ever Beethoven recording, a stunning reading of the extensive Concerto no. 4 and the jubilant Concerto no. 1. Even though he has performed this repertoire extensively in concert, Lang Lang waited for the perfect moment and the perfect team to record his first pair of concertos from these milestones of piano repertoire When Lang Lang embarked on his international career, Christoph Eschenbach became one of his first and most enthusiastic proponents - and a mentor and close friend ever since, Eschenbach was the ideal collaborator for Lang Lang's first Beethoven recording.

Five Piano Concertos and the Piano Sonata No. 32, opus 111, recorded in stereo in 1962 and 1964, respectively, by Wilhelm Kempff [1895-1991] and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Ferdinand Leitner [1912-96]. The sonata, the composer’s last, is certainly more than a mere filler, from the opening hesitancy of the ‘Allegro con brio ed appassionato’ to the extended closing section of the second movement.