Beethoven Piano Concerto 1

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.

Celebrated pianist and renowned Beethoven specialist Rudolf Buchbinder releases his second album with Deutsche Grammophon following his exclusive contract with the label in 2019. The album captures a breath taking live performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 1. from 2016 between Buchbinder, his long time friend Christian Thielemann , and the Berlin Philharmonics. This does not only represent the first DG release with Christian Thielemann and the Berlin Philharmonics but also celebrates Beethoven’s 250th anniversary this year. The album is completed with Beethoven’s six variations for piano op. 34 recorded in August 2019, which is also when Buchbinder recorded his successful Diabelli Variations.

Today, it’s hard to fathom the worldwide sensation sparked by Van Cliburn’s victory in the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. An American pianist winning a prestigious Russian event at the height of the Cold War made headlines everywhere and the two rival superpowers took the young Texan to their hearts, with a tickertape parade in Manhattan and frequent, sold-out tours of the Soviet Union by Cliburn during the following years. VAI has secured the original Russian television tapes of some of those concerts; this first of the series is from the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 1962, with the excellent Kirill Kondrashin leading the Moscow Philharmonic. The formal program was made up of two of the most popular concertos in the repertory. The Beethoven Emperor Concerto features Cliburn’s big, bold tone and exquisite phrasing; his magisterial entrance is riveting and the meaningful trills Beethoven sprinkled throughout the work are done with pristine exactitude. The Tchaikovsky Concerto–Cliburn’s signature piece–is even better; the massive opening chords thrilling, ample poetry in the slow movement and, as in the Beethoven, truly stunning legato playing. Also worthy are the two encores–Chopin’s Fantasy in F minor, given with a mixture of power and poetry, and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12, brimming with excitement and pianistic mastery.

Paramax Films captured the concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at its resident venue of Charles Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv in July 2015 conducted by Zubin Mehta and starring Georgian concert pianist Khatia Buniatishvili. The film showcases a performance of the piano’s most famous orchestral repertoire; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 1 and Liszt’s virtuosic Piano Concerto No 2 with its waves of sound.

These Beethoven performances were recorded in 1960 during Sviatoslav Richter’s first tour of the United States, and they sound marginally fuller and more vivid here than in RCA’s deleted Papillon series transfers. The C major concerto has a lot to recommend it. Richter’s Olympian command and control of the keyboard, tonal solidity, and emotional reserve remind me of the Michelangeli/Giulini and Pollini/Jochum versions from nearly two decades later. Charles Munch’s robust and powerfully projected accompaniment proves how underrated this conductor was (and still is) in the central German repertoire, although Szell’s sharper accents and astringent textures better suit the music’s witty subtext.