Giltburg

Boris Giltburg has set out to learn and film all 32 piano sonatas by Beethoven by the end of 2020. The project started as a personal exploration, driven by curiosity and his strong love of the Beethoven sonatas, and the recordings presented in this initial volume display Giltburg’s customary spirit, technical finesse and convey the electric atmosphere of the live recording.

Boris Giltburg has set out to study and film all of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas by the end of 2020. The project started as a personal exploration, driven by curiosity and his strong love of the Beethoven sonatas. These performances display Giltburg’s customary spirit and technical finesse, and also convey the electric atmosphere of the live recording.

Boris Giltburg has set out to study and film all of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas by the end of 2020. The project started as a personal exploration, driven by curiosity and his strong love of the Beethoven sonatas. These performances display Giltburg’s customary spirit and technical finesse, and also convey the electric atmosphere of the live recording.

Boris Giltburg has set out to study and film all of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas by the end of 2020. The project started as a personal exploration, driven by curiosity and his strong love of the Beethoven sonatas. These performances display Giltburg’s customary spirit and technical finesse, and also convey the electric atmosphere of the live recording.

Boris Giltburg’s personal exploration of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas reaches its penultimate volume. The Sonata No. 27, Op. 90 dates from 1814 and foreshadows Beethoven’s late period in its nuanced, expressive musical language. Sonata No. 28, Op. 101 is the first of Beethoven’s late period piano works, combining haunting poetic beauty with complex contrapuntal passages. Sonata No. 29, Op. 106, nicknamed ‘Hammerklavier’, is a monumental, symphonic work, pushing all boundaries of what had been achieved in the sonata form so far.

These interpretations are enormously pleasurable and at times revelatory. Always clean and never showy, Giltburg’s pianism is ideally suited to late Beethoven, and his touch throughout is light and flexible…There are no histrionics in his treatment of Op. 109, and none in the variations of Op. 111 – no fashionable excursions into jazz – while Op. 110 comes over with a plainness and sincerity which warms the heart.