Eroica Szel

This is listed as the final installment in the Eroica’s Mendelssohn quartets series. It also happens to come on the heels of two brand new complete sets—one from the preeminent Emerson Quartet, the other from the pacesetting Pacifica Quartet. Comparisons to these ensembles, though probably unavoidable, are not particularly apt or instructive, for the Eroica is a period-instruments group dedicated to interpretations of 19th-century Romantic works that reflect as closely as possible the performance practices that would have been in vogue at the time the music was written.

Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" & Symphony No. 8
The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen · Paavo Järvi
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 266 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: RCA Red Seal # 88697542542 | Country/Year: Europe 2007 | Genre: Classical

…Summarising, the team of Järvi and his talented young chamber orchestra players evoke Beethoven's wilful and often irascible (but lovable) polemics and character like few before them. The Eroica is fully charged and brilliantly executed. It joins the ranks of élite performances, together with an 8th Symphony whose real stature is newly revealed and celebrated. The Polyhymnia International engineers provide an immediate and fully transparent recording, with a measured amount of ambience, despite two locations being involved.

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover, for the silk, lace and velvet outfits worn by the members of the Eroica Trio in the booklet photos do at least hint at the nature of the music-making on the disc. This is baroque repertoire played in an unabashedly old-fashioned way, warm and genteel, soft phrases delivered at stately tempos with lush vibrato, not a hint of the spare-toned edginess of many authentic instruments practitioners. The romantic attitude is most strongly conveyed in the two well-known works heard in arrangements, the grandly tragic Adagio of Tommaso Albinoni and the dramatic Chaconne from J. S. Bach's D minor Partita, which here almost sounds more like a work of the 19th century than the 18th. The three trio sonatas by Antonio Vivaldi, his compatriot and contemporary Antonio Lotti and Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, are somewhat less arresting pieces but still given lovely, affectionate performances.

Ludwig van Beethoven - Ronald Brautigam - Eroica, Variations (1796-1802)
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 299 MB | Full Artwork: 99 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: BIS # BIS-SACD-1673 | Country/Year: Sweden 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Classical Period, Piano

"…Like the previous releases in this series, BIS's sound is excellent. All I can say are the usually adjectives of praise. Since I received this disc a month and a half ago I've probably listened to the Eroica Variations nearly 20 times – like the previous releases, it's Beethoven played to perfection." (sa-cd.net)

Ludwig van Beethoven - Ronald Brautigam - Eroica, Variations (1796-1802)
SACD ISO (2.0/MCH): 3,60 GB | 24B/88,2kHz Stereo FLAC: 1,19 GB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: BIS # BIS-SACD-1673 | Country/Year: Sweden 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Classical Period, Piano

"…Like the previous releases in this series, BIS's sound is excellent. All I can say are the usually adjectives of praise. Since I received this disc a month and a half ago I've probably listened to the Eroica Variations nearly 20 times – like the previous releases, it's Beethoven played to perfection." (sa-cd.net)

Among the best-known piano trios, the Eroica Trio is also one of the most successful all-women chamber ensembles in the world. Winners of the 1991 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Competition, the ensemble went on to a successful debut at Lincoln Center and several tours of the United States, Europe, and Asia. The trio quickly gained a reputation for passion and excitement in its performances and for innovative programs.

The new recording from EM Records features works by Edward Elgar, whose fiery and technically complex tudes caractristiques date from the early part of his career; and Donald Francis Tovey, who, in his emotionally wideranging Sonata eroica, pays homage to Bach. The disc also presents a selection of the Virtuosic Studies by Albert Sammons, the violinist who made benchmark recordings of Elgar's Violin Sonata and Concerto and who made a highly significant contribution to British violin-playing in the early years of the twentieth century. These are being recorded here for the first time.