PIANO CONCERTOS 3 & 5

This release focuses on the Third and Fifth piano concertos - the former composed in 1800 and dedicated to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia. The score was still in progress when the composer debuted the piece from memory.

HARRIS GOLDSMITH PLAYS BEETHOV

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Tolstoy’s War and Peace – those works of art that are truly part of the canon of global culture are few and far apart. In music, one work that holds significance for people all over the world is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and especially its choral finale. Even today, as we are getting ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of its creator, the sheer size and complexity of the symphony is daunting. There are some eyewitness accounts from the first performance, at the Kärntner-Tor-Theater in Vienna on 7th May 1824: we know for instance that Beethoven was on stage himself throughout the performance, but that owing to his deafness he did not notice the audience’s overwhelming enthusiasm. What the Ninth sounded like that evening in Vienna is something we will never know, however – which is why hearing it in a historically informed performance on period instruments is all the more interesting. With impeccable credentials from their 65-album series of Bach’s complete cantatas, and acclaimed recent recordings of Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki now give us their rendering of Beethoven’s last and greatest symphony, joined by a fine quartet of vocal soloists.

In these two string trios may be heard the voice of the young Beethoven at its most personal and polished. They were composed just before and just after his critical move from Bonn to Vienna, where he proceeded to establish himself in the wake of Haydn and Mozart. Both composers cast their own contrarian shadows over Beethoven’s trios. Beethoven adopted both the form and tonality of Mozart’s sublime E flat Trio-Divertimento for his first essay in the genre, and yet otherwise went out of his way to distance his own work from its apparent exemplar. The accentuation of weak beats in the first Minuet is typical of Beethoven’s headstrong manner, even if the second is more Mozartian. Elsewhere the young man reveals himself quite capable of inhabiting an idiom of Viennese grace and courtly charm, but equally likely to subvert and rebel against it. From a couple of years later, the Serenade also opens in bold and striking fashion, with a Spanish-accented march, but the peaceful Andante and solemn, French-style Adagio follow older models deriving from Baroque-era trio sonatas. Most unusual – at least in 1795 – is the fifth-movement Polonaise, linking the very different languages of Rameau and Chopin. The Serenade concludes with an expansive variation movement where Beethoven does at last acknowledge some debt to Mozart – yet the overall impression left by both works is of a skilled craftsmanship that owes most to the teaching he received from Haydn and Salieri.

Comprising Alessandro Milani (violin), Luca Ranieri (viola) and Pierpaolo Toso (cello), this trio was founded in 2004, reviving the name of the classic ensemble led by Franco Gulli, with Bruno Giuranna and Giacinto Caramia, who performed and recorded the landmark works of the string trio repertoire in the 60s and 70s.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Ludwig van Beethoven’s first printed work was a set of variations, published in 1783 when he was only twelve years old and his final keyboard composition was the massive set of thirty-three variations on a theme by Anton Diabelli, composed almost four decades later. Not counting the several movements in variation form included in the sonatas, his twenty-one sets of piano variations thus trace a line of development in his production, parallel to those formed by the 32 piano sonatas or the 16 string quartets. On this the 14th volume in his acclaimed traversal of Beethoven's keyboard music, Ronald Brautigam performs five sets, composed between 1802 and 1809. In three of these Beethoven uses themes of his own, including the Ruins of Athens Variations, Op.76, nick-named after the play for which Beethoven later wrote incidental music, reusing the martial theme in a 'Turkish march'. The two remaining sets both use English themes Beethoven’s choice of God save the King and Rule Britannia may well reflect his often expressed respect for that country – as well as his interest in the English market for sheet music. As the final part of the programme, Brautigam includes a selection of smaller pieces, most of them of an earlier date than the preceding variations. Some of these are probably student pieces, in particular the Preludes Op.39 and WoO 55 and the Fugue in C major, fruits of the counterpoint exercises Beethoven was assigned by his first teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe, and by Johann Albrechtsberger. Six dances close a disc that offers many opportunities to glimpse another Beethoven than the composer we all believe we know.

The start of an exciting ane prestigious series: the complete Beethoven piano sonatas played by Giovanni Bellucci. Bellucci is one of the most interesting and extraordinary pianists of today. Described by Piero Rattalino as ''a force of nature, vast and palpitating'', his playing is highly original, striving to recreate the original impact of the work she is playing: ''het akes us back to the Golden Age of the Piano'' wrote Le Monde. His recordings, notably with works by Liszt, were showered with prizes such as Diapson d'Or, Choc, Editor's Choice, CD Maestro, etc. Giovanni Bellucci embarks on this epic musical journey of recording the complete Beethoven Sonatas, a challenge that every pianist of world stature will face. His Beethoven is free, with a strong sense of rhetoric and improvisation, adhering nevertheless strictly to the score and its intentions. The result is fresh, exhilarating and illuminating, letting us marvel at the originality and genius of the music.

At the heart of Trio Origo's repertoire are the earliest trios composed for clarinet, cello and piano. The origins of the repertoire lie in the 'Gassenhauer' Trio composed by Beethoven in 1797 for a clarinetist, probably Joseph B�hr, who also suggested to the composer that he use a hit tune - known as a 'Gassenhauer' - from a recent opera by Joseph Weigl. Beethoven (uncharacteristically, but with perhaps an eye on the work's future commercial success) duly obliged, and made Weigl's tune the basis for his theme-and-variations finale - but he also produced a version of the trio substituting the clarinet for the violin to ensure it's popularity. An adroit piece of reverse compositional engineering produced the Op.38 Trio from the Septet Op.20. The Septet was one of Beethoven's most popular early works, and resulted in a string of arrangements for smaller forces, most of them made by other hands, but the composer himself produced this arrangement for clarinet trio, which happily amplifies the solo instrument's prominence in the Septet. He never wrote a more joyous melody than the main subject of the first movement, and the work as a whole finds the composer at his most relaxed. While Beethoven's clarinet writing has never received the attention accorded to Mozart's, he wrote for it with no less warmth and affection, and this pair of trios displays a winning, sunny side of the composer that is often overshadowed by the cantankerous instrumental dramatist of popular myth and legend. The Finnish members of Trio Origo all pursue successful careers with chamber and period-instrument ensembles such as the Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Finnish Baroque Orchestra and the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, but they have been performing Classical-era clarinet trios together since 2004, ranging beyond Beethoven to explore little-known gems by his contemporaries.

BIS ecopak Yevgeny Sudbin has previously recorded Beethoven’s piano concertos – releases which have received international acclaim, for instance on the website ClassicsToday.com: ‘A Beethoven experience you will not want to miss.’ For his first disc featuring solo works by Beethoven, Sudbin has chosen the two final sonatas and the Six Bagatelles, Op. 126 – late works written between 1821 and 1824, just a couple of years before the composer’s death. There are numerous anecdotes that testify to the fact that Beethoven was highly temperamental. But in his liner notes to this disc, Sudbin writes of another, contrasting side to the composer: ‘warmth, generosity and wisdom – with unexpected outbursts of cheeky humour – are also unmistakably among Beethoven’s qualities and particularly evident in the works on this recording’. If Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas form one of the most important collections of works in the history of music, then the final ones belong to his crowning achievements. Various musicians and musicologists have commented on them, hearing a hard-won triumph of the spirit in the great fugue of the final movement of Op. 110, and interpreting Op. 111 – and especially its second movement, the famous Arietta – as a last farewell. The set of Bagatelles was composed only months after Beethoven had completed his monumental Ninth Symphony. It became the last work for piano to be published in his lifetime, and together the six brief pieces form a distillate of a lifetime of writing for and playing the piano.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Regarded as one of the finest interpreters of classical and romantic repertoire, Imogen Cooper is internationally renowned for her virtuosity and lyricism. This recording is her sixth release on Chandos Records, following earlier discs of works by Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, Chopin, and Robert and Clara Schumann. Imogen Cooper writes: ‘Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations are rightly considered to be among the greatest works for solo piano ever composed, by Beethoven or anyone else. It is incontrovertible that there is not one superfluous note in this huge masterpiece – each variation is flawless in construction and imagination, and in depth of characterisation. The breadth of ideas is limitless. Each variation tells a whole story, and for all that some are connected in mood, it is no mean feat as a performer to respect the huge scope of Beethoven’s vision.’ Imogen Cooper plays a Steinway Model D, and was recorded in the concert Hall at Snape Maltings, Suffolk.