Pianist and barrister Paul Wee has made recordings devoted to the virtuoso repertoire of the 19th century, earning him the highest praise from the specialist press. He also tackled Beethoven with Franz Liszt's transcription of the Heroica Symphony, a recording named "Editor's Choice" by Gramophone, which wrote: « Paul Wee proves himself a master of these treacherously demanding transcriptions, sweeping aside the technical challenges to present these great works with consummate musicianship. » It was therefore only a matter of time before he turned his attention to the pinnacle of piano literature: Beethoven's late sonatas. While Sonata Op. 101 is the least known of this select group, it nonetheless opens Beethoven's third and most prophetic creative period. It is followed by Sonata Op. 106, the "Hammerklavier", an immense work in every sense of the word which, as the author of the liner notes put it, "makes such demands., that it is as if a new set of auditory equipment was required." As for the last three sonatas, worked on at the same time and conceived as a triptych, Beethoven knew that they would constitute his three final utterances in the genre of the sonata. To quote the author of the introductory text once again, "the closing pages of Op. 111 escape earth's orbit forever, leaving the listener behind."
The Kammerakademie Potsdam (Chamber Academy Potsdam) and it's principal conductor Antonello Manacorda will complete their new Beethoven cycle with the release of all nine Symphonies in a special 5-CD boxset out on Sony Classical on May 3. As the third and final installment in the series, the release will include their new recording of Beethoven's Third, Fourth and Eighth Symphonies as well as the composer's legendary Ninth Symphony. The release coincides with the 200-year anniversary celebrations of the premiere performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in early May. The first two installments in the ensemble's Beethoven cycle recording have been released to great critical acclaim.
A monument of piano literature, the grand finale of the "New Testament of the piano": Tomoko Ogasawara performs Ludwig van Beethoven's last three piano sonatas on her new GENUIN album. She captures the transcendent quality of these masterpieces, which transcend boundaries in every respect, with precision and sensitivity. The immense technical difficulties vanish, just as Beethoven must have wished, behind great seriousness and depth of feeling. Musical proclamation par excellence!
Genius Beethoven - Piano Works by Ludwig van Beethoven
Genuin
CD
$20.99Nov 15, 2024
Even nearly 200 years after Beethoven's death, his music still has much to discover. Pianist Ulrich Roman Murtfeld presents a curated selection of Beethoven's piano works on his new GENUIN album, including both rarities and famous pieces. He juxtaposes the magnificent "Waldstein Sonata" with the early Sonata in E-flat Major, op. 7, and the furious "Rage Over a Lost Penny" with the variation works on a "Swiss Song" and "God Save the King." Murtfeld's refined and precise piano playing brings both new discoveries and great classics to light!
Ludwig van Beethoven: Late Works for Flute and Piano
Audite Musikproduktion
CD
$20.99Sep 05, 2025
A special selection from Ludwig van Beethoven's late period works: folk song variations for piano with optional flute part. Framing the monumental "Hammerklavier Sonata", they form an impressive contrast and show a rarely illuminated facet of the composer. This release marks the beginning of a two-part series which will subsequently be dedicated to Beethoven's early works for flute and piano.
Beethoven: Overtures & Incidental Music / Skrowaczewski, Minnesota Orchestra
Vox
CD
$19.99Oct 27, 2023
No collection of the composer's orchestral works would be complete without the overtures and theater music. The Minnesota Orchestra and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski's acclaimed VoxBox set of the overtures and incidental music makes a welcome return to the catalogue. Produced by the legendary Elite Recordings team of Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz, and newly remastered from the original analogue tapes in high-definition.
REVIEW:
This set is an absolute joy. In athletic and muscular playing, the orchestra appear to strain at the leash, ready to explode with exuberance. Phyllis Bryn-Julson and the Minnesota Bach Society are an excellent match in the vocal numbers, and the recording is as vivid and rich as the performers.
For the fifth instalment of the critically acclaimed Schubert+ series, Can Cakmur juxtaposes the Viennese composer with his illustrious elder Ludwig van Beethoven, for the first time in this series. After establishing his mastery of the lied genre, Schubert still had to show his full potential in the realm of piano sonatas, a quintessentially Beethovenian form. In his Sonata in A major, D 664, he abandons the traditionally oppositional nature of the sonata in favour of a melody- based narrative in which landscapes appear to change gradually, as if seen from a traveller's perspective, thus offering a conception that is as new as it is personal. Beethoven is represented here by a series of variations, a genre in which he also excelled. The 32 Variations in C minor range from tender yearning to an emotional turmoil reminiscent of the 'Appassionata' Sonata. In the Sonata in C minor, D 958, composed in 1828, the first of his towering final trilogy, Schubert staked his claim to be seen as Beethoven's successor as a writer of piano sonatas. In a work that Can Cakmur sees as a tribute to Beethoven, Schubert achieves a synthesis of the master's influence and the lyricism of his own early sonatas. Just weeks before his death, the younger composer finally sits beside the older master and converses with him on equal terms.
The eminent Martha Argerich is one of the most loved and admired classical pianists of all time. She quickly gained and maintained world-wide reputation for her exciting performances. This set is the 11th volume of DOREMI's special series of live performances and broadcasts featuring the artistry of the young Martha Argerich. Most items are first release ever. The performances here are live recordings from her Venice recital in February 1969, and from her Cologne broadcast in September 1960.
Stefania Neonato is involved in both historical performance practice on historical instruments as well as the modern piano playing tradition. Christine Busch can be heard as a soloist and chamber musician with both the modern and baroque violin in concerts worldwide. The fortepiano used for the present recordings come from the Viennese workshop of Nannette Streicher and has the serial number 1060. Ludwig van Beethoven himself was good friends with the couple and played their instruments. The three selected sonatas on this album span a period of fourteen years, from 1798 (Op. 12/1 and 3) to 1812, the year of the composition of Op. 96 - two years before the piano used here was completed. Nannette Streicher opened her piano workshop together with her husband and her brother in Vienna at the end of the 18th century. They built well over a thousand instruments, of which only around forty fortepianos have survived to this day.
Beethoven, Kurbatov & Rzewski: The People United / Kholodenko
Quartz Music
CD
$18.99Nov 04, 2022
The present release is a mind-blowing rendition of a contemporary classic by amazing Ukrainian pianist, past winner of Van Cliburn competition. “Recordings usually start to live their own lives after their release. However, this one happened to be very special since it acquired its very meaning long before getting to the publishing phase. Recorded in September 2021, this project survived February 24, 2022 - the date marking for me the end of a fragile balance between humanity and medieval darkness. This recording is dedicated to the people of a free and independent Ukraine, whose unshakable spirit will never be defeated.” (Vadym Kholodenko)
The Sonus Quintet is Germany's first reed quintet, consisting of clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, oboe, and bassoon. This unusual combination of woodwind instruments allows for imaginative and airy sounds beautifully showcased on the ensemble's GENUIN debut album. The program includes the quintet's own transcriptions and the original composition "Refraction" by David Biedenbinder from 2015. The album title "Light" is reflected in various ways in the works: Gershwin's "An American in Paris," Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," and Grieg's famous "Air" from the "Holberg Suite."
Leon Fleisher Live, Vol. 4: Beethoven, Brahms, Franck, Mozart, Rachmaninoff
Doremi
CD
$40.99Sep 30, 2022
Described by the New York Times in 1944 as “One of the most remarkably gifted of the younger generation of American keyboard artists,” Leon Fleisher was born in San Francisco in 1928. In 1944, at age 16, he played the Brahms first Piano Concerto as soloist with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Pierre Monteux. In 1952 he won the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels. He played the Brahms and Beethoven Piano Concertos often and recorded them with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1964, he noticed that two fingers of his right hand were beginning to involuntarily curl up. He tried every therapy that existed then, but his solo career was effectively ended. He continued to teach, and conduct and in 1967 began to perform works for the left hand. In 1995 he succeeded to regain the use if his right hand and began performing and recording with two-hands. Leon Fleisher passed away in 2020 at age 92. DOREMI is proud to offer here a hitherto unreleased live recording of 16 years old Leon Fleisher playing Brahms Piano concerto No, 1 with the New York Philharmonic, with Pierre Monteux conducting.
On the occasion of conductor Georges Prêtre's 100th birthday in August, the label SWRmusic will release an 8CD box-set containing a wonderful collection of representative orchestral works by eleven composers, thus showing the fruitful collaboration between the French conductor and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSO). Most of the recordings are being released for the first time, with the exception of the works by Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss, which have previously been released by this label.
The Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1945 and has developed into one of Germany’s most important musical ambassadors over the following seven decades. World-renowned conductors, as well as some of the world’s greatest soloists, have been guests of the Stuttgart RSO, including Carlos Kleiber, Ferenc Fricsay, Karl Böhm, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Hans Knappertsbusch, Sir Georg Solti, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Kurt Sanderling, Gary Bertini, and Herbert Blomstedt, as well as Maria Callas, Mstislaw Rostropowitsch, Maurizio Pollini, Yehudi Menuhin, Alfred Brendel, Hélène Grimaud, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Elina Garanca, Rolando Villazon, Hilary Hahn, Sol Gabetta, and Lang Lang, to name just a few.
Martha Argerich Live, Vol. 8: Tchaikovsky, R. Schumann, Chopin & More
Doremi
CD
$40.99Oct 07, 2022
Over 20 years ago, Alex Ross, the noted music critic for the New Yorker, described the atmosphere of a Martha Argerich recital in terms reminiscent of the golden age of nineteenth century piano virtuosos: “Her concerts conjure up scenes from another place and time: grown men running down the aisles clutching bouquets, world-renowned musicians pummeling the railings of the upper boxes, jaded critics breaking into foolish smiles.” The subject of these rapturous responses, has, unlike the traditional virtuoso, played relatively few solo recitals, preferring to make music with others. This set is the 8th volume of DOREMI’s special series of live performances and broadcasts featuring the artistry of the young Martha Argerich.
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Op.31/3 & 110, Bagatelles Op. 33 &
Piano Classics
CD
$19.99Jan 16, 2026
A unique recital on record of complementary bagatelles and sonatas from two distinct periods in Beethoven's life, in a new recording by a modern master pianist. Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy is 'a storyteller', remarked Jeremy Nicholas in his Gramophone review of the Chopin sonatas on Piano Classics. He went on to praise 'nigh-on ideal' playing in the Second Sonata: 'unforced, rhythmically buoyant [and] texturally translucent'. The German pianist now illuminates four works of Beethoven with the same qualities. The Sonata Op.31 No.3 and Bagatelles Op.33 both date from what would prove to be a transitional point in Beethoven's career, around the year 1802, as he was stretching his wings and his capabilities. They achieve striking and often sudden contrasts of expression within both expansive sonata-form structures and the miniature sketch-form of the bagatelle, which Beethoven effectively invented from scratch with this set. 'Schmitt-Leonardy's superb technical and musical command holds unflagging interest' through the variation sets of Brahms, according to Jed Distler in another Gramophone review. Such command is a prerequisite for addressing the late masterpieces of Beethoven, so often recorded, and to which Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy brings his own, individual musical intelligence. Twenty years elapsed between those earlier pieces and the Sonata Op.110, during which time Beethoven's thinking inevitably underwent a sea-change. By this point he was striving ever more keenly to achieve the expression of transcendence in music, and the Sonata's ineffable opening phrase seems to distil that search into an unforgettable gesture. The Sonata is also marked by the composer's intensifying preoccupation with Baroque-era counterpoint, which gives the most haunting life to the finale's semi-autobiographical narrative of vitality lost and regained. The Bagatelles Op.126 are trifles in name only, contemporary with the Ninth Symphony, sharing the Olympian humour of it's Scherzo and the span of the Diabelli Variations. Each one captures a mood as intense as it is fleeting. They are perhaps comparable in this way with the sonatas of Scarlatti, such as those played by Schmitt-Leonardy on another Piano Classics album: 'one the most intelligently programmed and distinctively played Scarlatti collections to cross my reviewer's desk in years.' (Gramophone)
Beethoven: Overtures & Incidental Music / Skrowaczewski, Minnesota Orchestra
Vox
CD
$19.99Mar 24, 2023
Learn more about this recording on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!
Much has been written about Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, formerly Leonore. Beethoven worked on it on and off for almost a decade. During that time the four different overtures included on this recording were composed. They are substantially different, not only in length but also in themes, while the Fidelio overture is composed in a different key and uses no material from the opera itself. The Ruins of Athens is a set of incidental music pieces composed for the opening of the Deutsches Theater in today’s Budapest. Even though only the Turkish March is often heard today, many listeners may be familiar rather with Liszt’s fantasia for piano and orchestra on themes of this score.
Stanislaw Skrowaczewski began to play the piano and the violin at the age of four, composed his first symphonic work at seven, gave his first public piano recital when he was eleven and went on to become one of the best known conductors in the world. He conducted several Polish orchestras before emigrating to the US where he was chief conductor of many leading orchestras. On the present recording he leads the GRAMMY Award-winning Minnesota Orchestra. The recordings of American orchestras produced for VOX by the legendary Elite Recordings team of Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz are considered by audiophiles to be among the very finest sounding orchestral recordings ever made.
Past praise of the recordings included on this remastered CD release:
‘The sound is by and large excellent, the beautiful clarity and simplicity of the sonics show modern American analog recordings at its best, just as the performances show the non-slick, musical/expressive side of music making in this country at its lively best.
-- Stereo Review, (11/1981)
It’s not all that uncommon to collect all of Beethoven’s dramatic incidental music and overtures in one set, but it’s quite possible that it’s never been done as well as this before.
-- Buffalo Evening News, (06/1981)
The overall sonic qualities of this venture are extraordinary.
-- Los Angeles Times, )04/1981)
The recorded sound is amazing. The performances are nothing short of a revelation. This record shows that the Minnesota Orchestra is one of the finest on the continent.
Beethoven & Kirchner: Leon Fleisher Live, Vol. 3 / Szell, New York Philharmonic
Doremi
CD
$40.99Jul 01, 2022
Described by the New York Times in 1944 as “One of the most remarkably gifted of the younger generation of American keyboard artists”. Leon Fleisher was born in San Francisco in 1928. In 1944, at age 16, he played the Brahms first Piano Concerto as soloist with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Pierre Monteux. In 1952 he won the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels. He played the Brahms and Beethoven Piano Concertos often and recorded them with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1964, he noticed that two fingers of his right hand were beginning to involuntarily curl up. He tried every therapy that existed then, but his solo career was effectively ended. He continued to teach, and conduct and in 1967 began to perform works for the left hand. In 1995 he succeeded to regain the use if his right hand and began performing and recording with two-hands. Leon Fleisher passed away in 2020 at age 92.
DOREMI is proud to offer here a hitherto unreleased live recording of Beethoven First and third Piano Concertos with George Szell and the New York Philharmonic and Frederic Waldman and Musica Aeterna Orchestra of New York.
Sony Classical is pleased to present a special edition of Leonard Bernstein’s American Columbia recordings from the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the conductor-composer’s most celebrated interpretations and works are collected here on these carefully chosen 10 original albums on 11 CDs.
There is, of course, the still-astonishing album that launched Leonard Bernstein’s international reputation as the most dynamic and charismatic conductor of his era, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring recorded in January 1958 – two months after his appointment as the youngest music director in the New York Philharmonic’s history. Reviewing a 2013 reissue, ClassicsToday.com declared: “It has an excitement, spontaneity, and primal fury that no other version quite matches.”
The Bernstein recording that launched the “Mahler Renaissance” in the 1960s is also here: his Third Symphony with the New York Philharmonic, which has arguably never been surpassed. And while we’re talking about Third Symphonies, Bernstein’s “Eroica” still sounds “wonderfully vibrant” (Gramophone) a half century after its first release. There is also his reading of Dvořák’s most popular symphony – “There’s no such thing as a ‘definitive’ recording [of the “New World”], but if there were, this one would come close to that imagined ideal” (ClassicsToday) – and two from Haydn’s magnificent “Paris” set: “It’s debatable whether there have been better performances” (ClassicalNet).
Bernstein himself conducts and plays Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (“The one indispensable recording of this familiar work, paired with an equally fine American in Paris” – New York Times). Bernstein the pianist also accompanies Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, at the peak of his matchless career, in an acclaimed album of Mahler lieder. The ballets Rodeo and Billy the Kid by Bernstein’s mentor and friend Aaron Copland are included: “Even the composer couldn't make [them] dance the way Bernstein does” (New York Times).
Bernstein the composer is also generously represented. The original Broadway cast recording of Candide from 1956 is included, as is the definitive version of his most famous work: the original Broadway cast recording of West Side Story from 1957.
The re-masterings in this new collection are the best ever issued of these thrilling recordings by one of the last century’s greatest musicians, selected from the Grammy® award-winning Leonard Bernstein – The Composer and the Leonard Bernstein – Remastered editions. Sony Classical’s new 11-CD Leonard Bernstein box set is the perfect introduction to the work of this American genius.
Past praise of previously released recordings included in this set:
Mahler: Symphony No. 3 / Lipton, Bernstein, NYP
This was the finest performance of Mahler’s Third when it was first issued back in 1962, and in some ways it has never been surpassed. Bernstein catches the riotous vulgarity of the first movement march music like no other conductor–not even his own digital remake reaches the level of sheer abandon he whips up here, and he also has the best of all fifth movements (bright and cheery, with dazzlingly prominent percussion).
-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)
Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 / Bernstein, NYP
There’s no such thing as a “definitive” recording, but if there were, this one would come close to that imagined ideal. Its special qualities haven’t dimmed a bit in decades since it was recorded, and every interpretive decision comes across with the inevitability of fate itself. First, you get the first-movement exposition repeat (very unusual for its time), then there’s the very slow (but still very flowing) Largo, gorgeously played and far from the trudge-fest that Bernstein would make of for DG. The scherzo goes like the wind, the fastest ever, and the finale offers simply the last word in excitement. If you don’t own this performance in some form, then you don’t know the “New World”.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 for Violin & Piano / Loguercio, Piemonti
Brilliant Classics
CD
$6.99$13.99Save 50%Jun 23, 2023
Hans Sitt (1850–1928) was an extremely important personality in the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries, and also a remarkably prolific composer. Among all this activity, he found the time to transcribe all (!) of Beethoven's nine Symphonies, among others.
His decision to transcribe them for violin and piano instead of for two piano so common in hus era, allows him to make the violin a part among parts, to immerse it in the (very rich) piano fabric, sometimes giving it a thematic role and sometimes not.
His transcription of the Ninth ends up revealing many aspects of the original score of which one had never been aware. In addition to being splendid to listen to, if only in that obvious sense of the formidable challenge it poses to the performers, it becomes an important and unexpected tool for delving deeper into the structure of the Beethovenian masterpiece. And for this we shall forever have to thank him.
REVIEW:
Sitt has succeeded magnificently in distilling the original material, but it also presents a great technical challenge for the two performers, which Loguercio and Piemonti meet with bravura. But it is not only the virtuoso that they rise to, for their playing is musically satisfying as well, especially in the slow movement, where they make the music effective with subtle moods.
