The Re-Sound Beethoven collection brings the Beethoven's symphonies back to the locations of their Viennese premieres. Four of these six venues still exist today, as do the eight Viennese halls and theatres where the composer's orchestral works were performed in his lifetime. The orchestral forces of the Wiener Akademie correspond in size and instrumentation to those Beethoven used."We want to add to the possibilities of historical instruments the sound and the aura of the concert halls in which the composer himself conducted and experienced his works." (Martin H�selbock)

Building on the success of the first two installments of their cycle devoted to Beethoven's sonatas for piano and violin (Alpha 240, Diapason d'Or of the year, and Alpha 407), Lorenzo Gatto and Julien Libeer conclude this complete series by recording the remaining four sonatas. Composed between 1797 and 1801, these sonatas are dedicated to Emperor Alexander I of Russia, except for op. 12 no. 3, which Beethoven dedicated to his teacher Antonio Salieri. Lorenzo Gatto and Julien Libeer's feeling for melody and tempo works wonders in these pieces, which they recorded in the ideal surroundings of the Salle de Musique of La Chaux de Fonds (Switzerland) and the Flagey Studio (Brussels, Belgium).

Olga Pashchenko is in the process of creating a unique place for herself in the world of the keyboard: she moves with astounding ease and skill from the harpsichord to the fortepiano, the organ, and the modern piano. After a recording of Beethoven's variations in 2015, the young pianist has now gone to the legendary Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, a venue she knows well since she regularly gives concerts within it's walls, to record three monuments of the pianistic literature - the Appassionata, Les Adieux and Waldstein sonatas - on the original Conrad Graf piano of 1824 conserved there. She utilizes all the sonic possibilities and the full palette of colors of this instrument made around fifteen years after the composition of these sonatas, three of the finest in the corpus of thirty-two that Hans von Bulow called 'the New Testament of every pianist'.

For her new, and Alpha debut, recording, pianist Olga Pashchenko has chosen the combination of Beethoven’s two Opus 49 sonatas and three sets of his variations, thus tackling what are commonly called ‘smaller forms’ but which remain important works nonetheless, especially the Variations, op. 35. • This young pianist commands admiration for her way of always enlarging her route, already a long one (she gave her first recital when she was 9, in New York), relying on certain great influences (in particular, Alexei Lubimov) and thereby further affirming her personality as an exceptional musician.

In the course of the eight recordings released by Alpha, the Orchester Wiener Akademie, conducted by Martin Haselb�ck, has accomplished it's objective of recording the complete Beethoven symphonies on period instruments, in the very venues where they were premiered, scrupulously respecting the orchestral forces of 200 years ago. The symphonies take us back to nineteenth-century Vienna for a tour of the Lobkowitz, Hofburg and Niederosterreich palaces, as well as the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Theater in der Josefstadt.

The Orchester Wiener Akademie and its conductor Martin Haselbock continue their Resound Beethoven series with this release, the fourth volume in the series. The aim of the Resound Beethoven series is to record the complete Beethoven symphonies on period instruments and in the venues where they were first performed, scrupulously respecting the layout of the orchestra used 200 years ago and meticulously following historical performance practices. This volume is devoted to the magnificent Symphony No. 3, “Eroica” and the Septet op: 20. The recording took place in May 2016 in the Eroica Saal at the Palais Lobkowitz, where each work was premiered in 1804 and 1907, in private performances.

The pianist Martin Helmchen has now joined Alpha for several recordings. Acknowledged as one of the leading pianists of his generation, an eminent interpreter of the German repertoire, Helmchen will explore various periods and composers (including Messiaen!), but Beethoven will have a preponderant place in his forthcoming recording projects. Before the complete concertos, planned for 2020, he tackles the Diabelli Variations, ‘a climax in the life of a pianist’. He sees these variations as ‘a voyage to the very heart of the infinity of human feelings and moods, by turns profound, philosophical, satirical’. He regards the cycle as a visionary work that heralds future developments in music, containing the first stirrings of twentieth-century minimalism, atonality and abstraction. This recording is the end result of a long personal association and numerous concerts; a powerful version in which each variation emerges as a masterpiece in its own right.

The last three of his thirty-two sonatas for the piano, composed 1821-22 but published separately, nonetheless form a musical and poetic trilogy. Much about these works: their inter-key signature relationships, thematic development, meter subtlety, trills up high, etc., was groundbreaking then and remain awe-inspiring still. Eric Le Sage, one of the leading pianists of his generation and a famed representative of the French piano school, is regularly praised for his subtle sound and real sense of structure and phrasing, with many recordings receiving France’s highest awards.

After a first recording of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations acclaimed by the critics (Diapason d'Or, BBC, Guardian, Le Monde) Filippo Gorini, a student of Alfred Brendel and winner of the first Prize and Audience Prize of the Bonn Beethoven Competition in 2015, pursues a fast-growing career. His concert appearances have drawn unanimous acclaim on many prestigious stages such as the Berlin Konzerthaus, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Munich Herkulessaal, Societ� del Quartetto di Milano and the Samsung Concert Hall in Seoul. Here he returns to Beethoven and tackles the perilous Sonata no.29, known as the 'Hammerklavier', which the composer himself said would pose a challenge for future generations, along with the Sonata no.32, which according to Thomas Mann represents the supreme accomplishment of and 'farewell' to sonata form.

With the three piano trios published in 1795, Op. 1, Ludwig van Beethoven took a genre still largely associated with salon music and raised it up to rival the string quartet. In these works Beethoven saw the true start of his creative journey. Likely to have been composed (at least in a preliminary version) before his move from his native Bonn to Haydn and Mozart's Vienna, the Trio in E flat major, Op. 1 No. 1, reveals a composer who, while still drawing inspiration from his illustrious elders, begins to display his own witty personality marked by impish, sometimes tigerish playfulness. Composed about fifteen years later, the two Op. 70 trios 'raise the genre to a level from which the later piano trio literature could move forward' in the words of Beethoven specialist Lewis Lockwood. Indeed, they clearly made a mark on the later trios of Schumann, Brahms and Tchaikovsky. The first of them, played here, is the more significant. It's nickname, 'Ghost', refers to it's unsettling central movement characterized by 'horror' writing, displaying a range of chilling effects. The recording concludes with an arrangement by the trio's cellist, Isang Enders, of a catchy and eloquently simple Ukrainian Cossack tune from a collection of Beethoven's folk song arrangements that Schubert would no doubt have loved.

For more than 30 years, Trio Parnassus has inspired audiences with their gripping virtuosity as well as their sensitive musicality. Time and again, they delight audiences with outstanding originals alongside newly discovered works, expanding the trio repertoire and sparking new momentum in concert halls around the world. This SACD now completes the cycle of recording all of Beethoven's trios for MDG with the famous Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 81b (arranged by Nikolaus Simrock from Sextet, Op. 81b) and Piano Trio, Op. 38 (from Septet, Op. 20).

Selected sacred works under the direction of Gunter Wand Wand's music-making moved those who heard it with it's impeccable balance of perfection coupled with faithfulness to the original, emotional fulfilment, intellectual control, utmost sensitivity and spiritual penetration. He described his mission as "serving music", a cause to which this totally unpretentious man remained committed for seventy years. He rose to be one of the true "greats" of the twentieth century, a figure standing head and shoulders above our restless times, his name synonymous with the highest musical quality

SOMM Recordings proudly announces this fifth and penultimate release in the complete cycle of the Beethoven Symphonies arranged for piano four-hands by the great Polish-German composer and pianist Xaver Scharwenka. This is a series that has consistently had listeners "waiting impatiently for the next volume" (MusicWeb International). Of the many piano-duo versions of the Symphonies, Scharwenka's benefit from an unbroken link back to Beethoven himself, for the arranger was a piano student of Franz Kullak, who in turn studied under the master symphonist's pupil Carl Czerny. The present Volume�5 adds Symphonies 4�&�8 to the collection, coupled with Ferruccio Busoni's two-piano transcription of Mozart's Magic Flute Overture BV�B�93, leaving only Beethoven's "Choral" Ninth still to be released on the series' concluding instalment. The performers undertaking this monumental recording project, the "phenomenal" piano duo of Tessa Uys & Ben Schoeman ("In Tune", BBC Radio�3), have performed all nine symphony arrangements in public for almost a decade, breeding a familiarity that informs the impeccable ensemble and authoritative vision they bring to the recordings. Gramophone's Peter J. Rabinowitz lauded this in Volume�4: "Uys and Schoeman cut through the clutter with impressive unanimity; and their finely gauged handling of dynamics and their rhythmic drive... assure that the symphonies emerge with their shape intact, even shorn of orchestral colour. It all sounds idiomatic, both as Beethoven and as piano music... knowledgeable and illuminating." The Sunday Times' Dan Cairns, who named Volume 3 a "Classical Album of the Week", also relished those "dual delights: you can just as easily feel you are listening to entirely new works as experience moments when your response will be along the lines of: 'Ah yes, that bit'. Both are richly rewarding... a�fascinating listening experience." The two-piano Magic Flute Overture included here echoes Volume�4 in the series, which featured the Mozart-Busoni Duettino concertante based on the Finale of Piano Concerto No.19, a performance hailed in BBC Music Magazine as "brilliantly conceived and light as a feather". Ates Orga, reviewing for International Piano, noted the change in aural texture from the four-hands Beethoven to two pianos, "the�audible separation of instruments enhancing their spatial impact". Ferruccio Busoni was a younger contemporary of Scharwenka, and they died the same year, making this the centenary of the deaths of both pianist-composers. Perhaps most associated with arrangements of Bach, Busoni also championed the music of his fellow Freemason Mozart, and he celebrates that link in his transcription of the Masonic opera's overture.

Pianist André-Michel Schub has been described by the New York Times as “pianistically flawless…a formidable pianist with a fierce integrity.” He has repeatedly performed with the world’s most prestigious orchestras, among them the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Detroit Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw, and the Bournemouth Symphony. Since 1997 he has been music director of the Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Music series, planning its chamber music programming and performing on a number of programs each year. He is currently an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. On this release, he performs two of Beethoven’s most famous piano works, the Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor ‘Appassionata,’ and the Piano Sonata No. 3 in C Major.

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO 9 HORE