Beethoven Piano Sonatas Kemp

Vladimir Horowitz’s interpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Op. 57 “Appassionata,” Op. 27, No. 2 “Moonlight,” and Op. 53 “Waldstein” is a testament to his unparalleled virtuosity and deep understanding of Beethoven’s work. The album, a collection of these iconic sonatas, showcases Horowitz’s technical brilliance and emotive playing.

Murray Perahia is a master interpreter of Beethoven. Here are his recordings of three Piano Sonatas that prompted the Penguin Guide to proclaim Perhaia “an authoritative and sensitive interpreter of Beethoven”. His release has long been awaited after almost 30 years of the original LP release. The results are of predictable excelency,as most of Perahia"s recordings: Taste,great technique and an ever improving maturity.

Hungarian pianist Annie Fischer made her debut at the age of 10 and studied with Ernst von Dohnányi at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. Her performance of the Liszt Sonata in B minor won Fischer first prize at the 1933 Liszt International Piano Competition, but her concert career was barely underway when war broke out; Fischer fled to Sweden. Afterwards Fischer returned to Hungary, and although she made her New York debut in 1961, she was only seldom seen in the United States and based her career in continental Europe.

Canada's Angela Hewitt would be on anybody's list of the world's great pianists, but she has been known as a Bach specialist. Her cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas on Hyperion has, to an extent, been what you might expect: technically precise, individualistic, a bit idiosyncratic. What listeners may not have been prepared for is how high the highs are. Here it is absolutely essential to stick around through the whole program. Hewitt's Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2 ("Tempest"), has odd features: violent accents in the outer movements, and a curious de-emphasis of the octave ornament figure that plays such an important structural role in the slow movement.

The second two-disc installment of a projected Beethoven sonata cycle from Christian Leotta offers individualistic interpretations that alternately hit and miss, sometimes within the same work. The “Waldstein” first-movement exposition and recapitulation exude power and polish, yet the development comes off too sectionalized and rounded off for the arpeggiated sequences to generate the dramatic tension we expect. Leotta’s deliberation in the Rondo yields gorgeous, alluringly blurred sonorities at the outset as he observes Beethoven’s long pedal markings, yet the extensive scales and rotary figurations run in place, moving nowhere until the Presto coda: too little, too late.

This new release from MDG presents Beethoven's piano sonatas op. 109, 110 and 111, performed by pianist Jin Ju. Jin Ju is a hugely flexible and versatile pianist; her concert in the Vatican in front of Pope Benedict and an audience of 5,000, in which she played music from three centuries on seven different historical pianos, is almost legendary.