Bach Beethoven

Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli (Mass in Time of War) ‒ a classical work for our times. Indeed, his faith was never of the bleak, incessantly penitential kind, but cheerful, reconciled and trusting, and it was in this spirit that he composed his sacred works, too. (Georg August Griesinger on Joseph Haydn, 1810).

German maestro Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra have recorded the complete Beethoven Symphonies for Philips twice. The first traversal was made in the 1970's. That cycle also included some of the overtures, and became legendary from the day it was issued. I well remember how sad and dismayed many collectors were when Philips elected not to issue that set in the USA. It was only available in specialty stores in large cities for a premium price.

Beethoven composed his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies more or less simultaneously during the years 1804-8, and they were both first performed in a memorable all-Beethoven concert in December 1808 that also featured the Fourth Piano Concerto (with Beethoven performing at the piano for the last time in public), the Choral Fantasy, and some other works. Despite being composed together, the Fifth and Sixth inhabit very different musical worlds. The fifth is a marvel of terse, dramatic writing, whereas the Sixth is more leisurely, frankly programmatic, and celebrates the glories of nature and the countryside.

This was the first set of the Nine to be planned, recorded and sold as an integral cycle. It was also a set that had been extremely carefully positioned from the interpretative point of view. Where Karajan's 1950s Philharmonia cycle had elements in it that owed a certain amount to the old German school of Beethoven interpretation, the new-found virtuosity of the Berliners allowed him to approach more nearly the fierce beauty and lean-toned fiery m anner of Toscanini's Beethoven style as Karajan had first encountered it in its halcyon age in the mid-1930s.

This is the fifth volume of Angela Hewitt’s cycle of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, and she is recording a full set of Mozart’s concertos too; and yet she is still probably best known for her Bach. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s when Beethoven slips into Bach-style fugues in the final movement of Op 110 that Hewitt sounds most masterful. Elsewhere she is incisive and thoughtful too, even if the two earliest works here, Op 2 no 2 and Op 10 no 1, demand a certain lightness of touch that they don’t quite get – the flurries and flourishes sound like collections of notes rather than single, self-propelling gestures. The second movement of Op 78 is a deft dialogue of question and answer, and Hewitt brings an inevitability to Op 110 that makes sense of its changes of direction even if she doesn’t obviously revel in the full extent and novelty of its inspiration.

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt made her reputation with fine, distinctive recordings of Bach and other Baroque composers, treated pianistically but not anachronistically. Baroque specialists who record Classical and Romantic music, especially that of Beethoven, tend to generate unorthodox results; exhibit A was Hewitt's fellow Canadian Glenn Gould. Hewitt has undertaken her own Beethoven piano sonata cycle, and while her readings are not outrageous like Gould's, they're perhaps part of the same general family.

Over 175 hours of music, featuring recordings by over 250 of the greatest Beethoven performers, ranging from Karl Böhm to Alfred Brendel, Claudio Arrau to the Amadeus Quartet, Wilhelm Furtwängler to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Emil Gilels to John Eliot Gardiner, Wilhelm Kempff to Herbert von Karajan, Yehudi Menuhin to Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Murray Perahia to Maurizio Pollini. Includes more than two hours of newly recorded music including several world premieres with Lang Lang, Daniel Hope and Tobias Koch. Over 30 discs of alternative recordings including historic performances and period instrument recordings. Limited & Numbered Edition.