Humans’ hope lies in art. The music of Schubert or Beethoven in particular, which gives us some idea of what worlds can still exist. What words can we use to make these works of art tangible? Not explainable, but tangible.

With this album, Turkish-born pianist Gülru Ensari and Romanian-born Herbert Schuch want to provide a space for experience, a place where they can carefully and tentatively approach the subject of eternity. The connection between Messiaen and Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms? Nothing more or less than a perceived truth. An involuntary connection of lines that are already there, but are drawn into infinity and meet somewhere, like the parallel rails of a dead-straight track that stretches right into infinity!

With this new recording “Eternity”, Gülru Ensari and Herbert Schuch entail the music lover to understand the act of listening as a dialogue with oneself (« let us experience it ourselves, recognising the infinitely varied ways in which people perceive things as something enriching instead of something striving for uniformity »).

Continuing his cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer releases Symphony No. 3, ‘Eroica’ paired with the Coriolan Overture. These warhorses of the symphonic repertoire showcase how Beethoven writes not only dramatically, but also profoundly lyrically. Fischer’s process of recording the cycle has been notably drawn out, having first insisted on performing and touring the music with his outstanding orchestra before committing to a studio recording. Previous releases feature Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7. They have been roundly praised, with The Guardian saying “the performance of the Seventh ranks, without question, among the greatest ever recorded. Utterly compelling.”

Mischa Levitzki (1898–1942) was born near Kiev to naturalized American parents who had returned to their homeland. He was a pupil of Michalowski, Stojowski, and Dohnányi and quickly established himself as a major rising star in the 1920s. Indeed, had it not been for his early death, he would surely have been seen as one of the major pianists of the century. He specialized in the virtuoso romantic repertoire, and his recordings include several of the warhorses of the period such as Rubinstein's 'Staccato' Etude and Moszkowski's 'La Jongleuse'. However, at the same time, there is a refinement to his playing which is heard to good effect in his Chopin and Schumann, making his Liszt noble rather than bombastic. The HMV recordings presented here form the most important part of his meager recorded legacy.

This album features the last three piano sonatas by Beethoven. pianist Dainius Vaicekonis has an active performance career as soloist, collaborative artist, and piano professor in the US and Europe.

This double-CD release is the third volume in the young Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen’s ongoing recording cycle of the Beethoven piano sonatas. This release includes Piano Sonatas Nos. 9–15 and 19 & 20, among them perhaps Beethoven’s most recognizable piano composition, the “Moonlight” Sonata. Widely lauded for the breadth of his repertoire that ranges from Baroque to the avant-garde, Jumppanen has spent several years focusing on the repertoire of the Viennese Classics, in particular Beethoven. His performances of the complete cycles of Beethoven's and Mozart's Piano Sonatas as well as Beethoven's concertos and chamber music have won critical acclaim. He was also specifically commissioned by Pierre Boulez to be the instrumentalist for the commemorative Boulez retrospective box set recently releases

This album by the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra playing on period instruments under the direction of Aapo Hakkinen includes Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770-1827) complete incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont.

What distinguishes Beethoven’s Egmont are great dramatic emotion of style, tightly unified musical ideas, and an absolute determination to create a sense of the triumph of freedom as the Utopian dream of the whole of mankind. The overture, the only one of the ten numbers to be heard regularly today in the concert-hall, draws all these intentions together in concentrated form. Its meaning is revealed only in context, together with the interludes and the final musical episodes.

Taken from the 2012 Japan tour that performed the complete Beethoven cycle in various cities across Japan garnering much acclaim for the Chor and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and now available in single editions, this live recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 from Tokyo's Suntory Hall also includes noted vocal soloists, Christiane Karg, Mihoko Fujimura, Michael Schade and Michael Volle, all frequent collaborators with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.

In September 1809, the Vienna Hofburg Theatre commissioned Ludwig van Beethoven to create new incidental music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Egmont". The tragedy had premiered in Mainz on January 9, 1789. It calls for incidental music, but various attempts – some commissioned by the poet himself – had remained unfinished or were unsatisfactory. The music was required in several sections of the drama, however, and the Vienna production of "Egmont" was to include it. Beethoven set to work. He made good progress, because the subject suited him: the tragedy is set in Brussels, under threat from Spanish troops, and deals with resistance against oppression and foreign rule. The Viennese theatre premiere of "Egmont" on May 24, 1810 still had to make do without music, however – the score was only finally completed by the third performance. Beethoven's incidental music was premiered on June 15, 1810.

The music itself makes it clear that this commission was close to Beethoven's heart - it far exceeds the level of incidental music common at that time. That applies not only to the compositional demands but also to the relationship of the music to the drama. Eschewing mere illustration, Beethoven provided an interpretation and therefore an additional level of meaning. The well-known Egmont Overture, the most dramatically dense part of the incidental music, anticipates the action and introduces the characters. A clear reference to the drama is made in the ending, which corresponds exactly to the symphony of victory called for by Goethe at the end of the tragedy. The finale - a clear reference to the drama - corresponds exactly to the “symphony of victory” called for by Goethe at the end of the tragedy.

This disc presents three sonatas, No. 1, No. 23 ('Appassionata'), and No. 30, Op. 109, performed by 2008 Grammy-winning pianist, Garrick Ohlsson. In the words of annotator Frank Cooper, 'Three stages of greatness-exploratory, revolutionary, visionary- are represented here...'.

American pianist Victor Rosenbaum returns for his third album for Bridge Records, a deeply felt and beautifully rendered all-Beethoven recital recorded in Boston's Jordan Hall. The works span a major portion of Beethoven’s output, from the Rondo in C (1797) to one of his last works for piano, the Six Bagatelles, Opus 126 (1825). American pianist Victor Rosenbaum has concertized widely as soloist and chamber music performer in the United States, Europe, Asia, Israel, and Russia in such prestigious halls as Tully Hall in New York and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. He has appeared at festivals all over the world. In addition to his absorption in the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Rosenbaum has performed and given premieres of works by many contemporary composers.