During the Biedermeier period, the piano gained huge popularity as a domestic instrument, and piano concertos were increasingly arranged for chamber music ensembles. Ignaz Lachner’s superb arrangements of Mozart’s piano concertos are well known, but his brother Vinzenz Lachner’s arrangements of Beethoven’s concertos are a rarity, though equally as valuable. This volume completes the cycle of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos in Vinzenz Lachner’s transcriptions for piano and string quintet.

Not only do you get performances to rank with the best, but also a bonus of the splendidly played Rondo.

Beethoven’s first two piano concertos share an abundance of lyric and virtuosic qualities. Concerto No. 1 in C major is expansive and richly orchestrated with a sublime slow movement that is tender and ardent, and a finale full of inventive humor. Concerto No. 2 in B flat major marries energy with elegance, reserving poetic breadth for its slow movement and quirky wit for the finale. Also included is the jovial Rondo, WoO 6, which Beethoven originally intended to be the finale of Concerto No. 2.

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REVIEWS:

Here’s a very promising start to what I assume will be a new Beethoven piano concerto cycle, featuring performances not otherwise included in Naxos’ “complete” Beethoven box. Boris Giltburg plays both works with the youthful panache that they require–the kind that makes you forget about any formal issues and just revel in the virtuoso passagework and good tunes. The standard for comparison in this coupling is Argerich/Sinopoli on DG–you might think an unmatchable team, at least pianistically, but Giltburg more than holds his own. Indeed, in Concerto No. 2 he matches Argerich’s fleet timing in the finale (and other movements) almost exactly, and in the First Concerto he’s even a bit quicker, all without sacrificing subtleties of touch, dynamics and phrasing for mere velocity.

Of course there are difference–welcome ones too. In the first concerto, Giltburg adds a couple of minutes to the central Largo, producing a genuine specimen of that particular tempo designation. His legato playing is beautifully sustained, making this early example of Beethovenian lyricism a real gem. Petrenko accompanies with real flair, proving himself a true partner in both concerto first movements. It’s so much more satisfying to have a real conductor working with a gifted soloist, rather than the single-person-at-the-keyboard approach so frequently offered these days. There’s just no substitute for full-time orchestral guidance. Giltburg also includes the original “Concerto No. 2 finale version” of the Rondo WoO 6, a considerable bonus, as are his intelligent and detailed booklet notes. Fine playing, fine conducting, fine engineering–in short, a really fine release generally.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

Giltburg is a subtle artist who, despite his all-encompassing technique, rarely, if ever, engages in virtuosic grandstanding, preferring instead to interpret the music for maximum artistic yield. Nor does he employ radical or eccentric interpretive approaches. Yet, his performances are never bland but rather quite individual, typically rich in nuance and meaningful detail, and containing insights missing in other versions. His accounts of the two concertos feature well-chosen dynamics, main lines and inner voices perfectly balanced, and judicious tempos. In addition, he realizes these are the works of a youthful Beethoven, not of the mature, profound and serious-minded master of the three concertos that followed. Thus, he points up their lighter, more vivacious characteristics, his dynamics appropriately less weighty and his pacing never too relaxed.

Not only do you get performances to rank with the best, but also a bonus of the splendidly played Rondo.

– MusicWeb International

In 2005 Igor Levit and Xiaohan Wang performed, together with the Kolner Kammerorchester under Helmut Müller-Brühl, as outstanding talents of the semi-final of the “International Beethoven Competition for Piano Bonn”. The competition had been initiated in the same year by the then President of the Federal Republic of Germany Horst Kohler. The young pianists, today successful all over the world, performed on that occasion Beethoven's piano concertos nos. 1 and 2. On this recording, Igor Levit performs the First Concerto, and Xiaohan Wang the Second.

Internationally established musicians Hanna Shybayeva (piano), Utrecht String Quartet and Luis Cabrera (double bass) present on this album the rarely performed and even more rarely recorded chamber music transcriptions of Beethoven's piano concertos Nos. 3 and 4 by Vinzenz Lachner. Hanna Shybayeva started her international career at the age of eleven as a "child prodigy." She recorded for several labels, bringing out repertoire by Ravel, Prokofiev, Chopin, Takemitsu, Shostakovich, and the complete Etudes-Tableaux of Rachmaninov. Since 2008 she has been a member of the New European Ensemble, one of the most innovative, vibrant, and versatile ensembles for New Music. Since 2013 she has been a professor at the International Anton Rubinstein Music Academy in Dusseldorf and at Conservatorio Giacomo Puccini La Spezia.

Here are two very personal, immediately spontaneous and highly dramatic interpretations of the two concertos, in which so many things sound excitingly new.

For 19th-century audiences Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 was the most loved of all his piano concertos, a work in which the balancing of high drama, tenderness, lyricism and humour is most pronounced and in which a coda resolves inner tensions with brilliance and triumphant grandeur. Piano Concerto No. 4 is the most introspective and poetic of the concertos. The simplicity of its opening piano statement gives way to an unprecedented dialogue in the central movement between a heartfelt piano and an austere unison string orchestra, before the infectious energy of the dramatic finale.

REVIEW:

Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto is a departure into a new era. And that’s what Boris Giltburg makes us feel in his interpretation with the Liverpool Orchestra under Vasily Petrenko. His first movement is very agitated and rhetorical, and the Largo is not a beautiful romance, but rather a reflection and lingering, a recharging of the batteries, so to speak, whose energy is used up in the last movement. On the whole, the contrasts are highly dramatic. Orchestra and pianist sometimes seem to want to go in directly opposite directions.

Excitement and contrasts between orchestra and piano also characterize the first movement of the Fourth Concerto in which Giltburg makes the cadenza particularly exciting and expressive. The second movement ends enormously sombre and hopeless, the Passagio experience is fearfully depicted. The last movement is jubilant and fluttering, extremely virtuosic and ravishing in its exalted manner.

So we have here two very personal, immediately spontaneous and highly dramatic interpretations of the two concertos, in which so many things sound excitingly new. And that makes us recommend these pianistically and orchestrally magnificent recordings without hesitation.

-- Pizzicato

Classical Music

These works share the common key of E flat major but represent two very different stages in the composer’s life. The Piano Concerto "No. 0," WoO 4, was written when Beethoven was 13 years old and is one of his earliest works. With the orchestral score lost, this extant version for piano solo written in Beethoven’s hand includes the tutti sections reduced for piano. The radiant ‘Emperor’ Concerto shows the 38-year-old Beethoven at the peak of his creative powers, and remains a glorious example of his spirit triumphing over life’s adversities.

REVIEW:

Boris Giltburg’s recording of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto is offered with a scintillating twist, the ‘other’ E-flat concerto composed when the composer was 13. This brings Giltburg’s Beethoven concerto cycle to a close, his ebullience and physicality the reverse of plain-speaking, brilliantly partnered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Vasily Petrenko.

Given such forces this is never simply ‘another’ Emperor, but one boldly and exuberantly conceived. Giltburg makes you listen with new ears to one of the most familiar and greatly loved works in the repertoire. The Piano Concerto No 0 (played in Beethoven’s original piano reduction) may be a protracted jeu d’esprit, but Giltburg’s relish of its tonic, virtuoso aplomb sets the pulse racing. Naxos soundworld is of an exceptional clarity and focus.

-- International Piano

Excellent performances of the Emperor and the rarely heard Concerto No. 0. The sound reproduction on this Naxos CD is vivid and well balanced. Those looking for an excellent performance of the Emperor and who are attracted to its lesser coupling, will certainly find this a most rewarding disc.

-- MusicWeb International

Including premiere recordings, this programme provides us with a privileged opportunity to engage with 36 of Ludwig van Beethoven’s rarely heard sketches, variations and briefest of compositions, even the earliest of which have much to teach us about the emergence of his unique voice and style. The range of Beethoven’s musical experimentation reveals a lasting interest in counterpoint, as well as practical pages such as cadenzas for a Mozart concerto, an incomplete sonata and a second version of the famous bagatelle Fur Elise. A significant supplement to his greatest works, these miniatures bring the full arc of Beethoven’s singular genius into ever clearer focus.

From the pen of the fifteen-year-old Beethoven, these three piano quartets are among the earliest examples of a chamber music genre that would not reach full maturity until the time of Brahms.

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 5-7, Op. 10 and No. 25, Op.

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 3

Beethoven: Piano Trios 'Ghost' and 'Archduke'

BEETHOVEN: String Quartets Op. 18, Nos. 1 and 2

BEETHOVEN: Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7

Beethoven and Hummel’s relationship was one of fractious beginnings, but ultimately true friendship. Between 1825 and 1835 Hummel arranged his contemporary’s Symphonies Nos. 1-7 and Septet, Op. 20 for his favored combination of pianoforte, flute, violin, and violoncello. Beethoven would surely not have objected- arrangements were, after all, a perfectly normal part of the 19th-century musical landscape. To audiences today his symphonies need little introduction but, thanks to the musical sensitivity and sheer brilliance of Hummel’s arrangements, it is possible to experience the thrill of hearing these extraordinary pieces afresh.

Unless one lived in a major European center with an orchestra, the opportunity to hear large-scale works by the great composers of the age was well-nigh impossible. The insatiable demand for new chamber versions of famed orchestral works saw Hummel ar-ranging Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 6 ‘Pastoral’ not long after the great composer’s death. Hummel approached his task with great care, bringing a fresh perspective to the works in his sensitive and compelling chamber music configurations. Hummel’s arrangements of Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 ‘Eroica’ can be heard on Naxos 8.574039.

Triumphing over deafness and turbulent political times, Ludwig van Beethoven singlehandedly changed the course of music history, laying down the foundations for the Romantic era. His nine symphonies grew out of the forms established in the time of Mozart and Haydn, but show a remarkable evolution which embraces heroic grandeur in the Third Symphony, patriotism and innovation in the Fifth Symphony, countryside imagery and narrative in the Sixth Symphony, and choral inspiration in the Ninth Symphony, the "Ode to Joy" from which has become the Anthem for Europe.

Even Beethoven couldn’t entirely escape the influence of Mozart, and this lineage can be traced in the melodic grace to be found in the symphonies as well as the concertos. Imposing in their stature, the five Piano Concertos are filled with lively inventiveness as well as some of the most beautiful music ever to emerge from this genre. Beethoven’s single work in the popular symphonie concertante form is the "Triple" Concerto, but it is the distinctive nobility of the Violin Concerto which has seen it gain an unassailable position as one of the greatest works in the repertoire.

Beethoven considered music "a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy", with greatness of conception and painstaking craftsmanship his hallmarks. The Overtures are no exception in this, reflecting the drama and excitement of the theater and including the opening of his only opera Fidelio.

Prolific in every aspect of music throughout his long and distinguished career, Carl Reinecke represented the complete musician with the belief that art should bring happiness to mankind. His imaginative transcription of Beethoven's bravura Triple Concerto sees the three instruments retaining their solo essence and sharing in the orchestral tutti to create a quintessential addition to the piano trio repertory. Heard here in its world premiere recording, Reineckes First Piano Trio inhabits the passionate and expressive sound world of Schumann and Mendelssohn.

Beethoven’s letters show an extensive and prolonged correspondence with Scottish publisher and keen amateur musician George Thomson, who made it his task to collect and publish folk song settings, commissioning the likes of Pleyel, Koželuch and Haydn. The Opp. 105 and 107 collections, written for piano with optional flute or violin parts, are filled with delightfully decorative but virtuoso writing. This recording offers versions with improvisation and ornamentation by flutist, conductor and former Rampal student Patrick Gallois, based on the performance practices of the early 18th c.

Beethoven: Violin Sonatas Nos. 5 and 9

This Naxos recording has put together a beautiful presentation by two accomplished musicians who complement each other so perfectly. Nishizaki Takako delivers a spirited, lively, and peppy performance which pairs very well with Jando, who also delivers the right light and spritely touch for these early (pre-sturm and drang), Beethoven pieces. Nishizaki's renditions are an excellent and enjoyable way to round out your Beethoven repertoire, Here the piano provides the niches for Nishizaki's winning, sweet violin sound that delightfully reaches us with it's charm and beauty.

Ludwig van Beethoven stands as a giant in music history for his great symphonies, piano sonatas and string quartets, and the challenges of deafness later in life. This programme shows the younger Beethoven's facility as a creator of light and entertaining chamber works as enjoyable to perform as they are to hear. Taking their cues from Mozart, the 'Duos' build on sonata form and dance movements, the slightly later 'Serenade' taking the shape of a genial 18th-century divertimento. Flutist Kazunori Seo was born in Japan in 1974. He began studying music at age 6 with his parents before going on to study in Paris. He was the recipient of the Premier Prix in flute in 1998 and the Premier Prix in chamber music in 1999. His previous recordings for Naxos include the flute music of Leopold Hofmann, Karl and Franz Doppler, Ignaz Moscheles, and Carl Czemy.

Beethoven’s permanent move to Vienna in 1782 allowed him direct contact with the operatic and Italianate culture of the city. He took lessons in Italian word setting from Salieri and almost immediately began the composition of a series of arias in that language, including Primo amore, piacer del ciel and later the dramatic recitative and aria Ah! perfido. Beethoven also set strophic songs in German that form part of the popular Singspiel tradition which are genial and rare examples of his art. Here, the songs are performed by soprano Reetta Haavisto, tenor Dan Karlstrom, and baritone Kevin Greenlaw.

Kemal Belevi’s works for the guitar, either solo or in combination, as heard on this album, exude the color and allure of the eastern Mediterranean. Without alluding to any specific tunes, he evokes Cypriot folk music in Cypriana, while the linked Four Sketches show his variety in the work’s bracing modernity. Belevi is at heart a romantic and a melodist of touching beauty as can be heard in Catch 22 and in the subtle color study Clouds. The poignant Suite Chypre is heard in this special arrangement made for Silvia and Livio Grasso.

Kemel Belevi’s music is steeped in the colors and atmosphere of the eastern Mediterranean, and his aim is ‘to create beautiful music’ based on melodies and rhythms that have been absorbed from the folk music of Greece, Turkey and the Middle East. Belevi’s own arrangements of works such as the evocative Suite Chypre and the richly varied Cyprian Rhapsodies have significantly extended the repertoire for two guitars. The Duo Tandem are drawn towards this composer’s skillful modernity and his celebration of traditional heritage reimagined within the sound world of the classical guitar.

Vincenzo Bellini was among the most important Italian opera composers of the early 19th century, and the quintessential representative of its bel canto tradition. Despite his enduring renown, his official operatic debut Bianca e Gernando was known only in its revised version of Bianca e Fernando until this rediscovery and revival at Bad Wildbad in July 2016. Set in the ducal palace of Agrigento and with its tale of secretive plots and triumph over tyranny, this original version of the opera presents both unknown music and significant differences from the revised version, giving its dramatic shape a distinctive new character.

Classical Music

Benda: Sinfonias Nos. 1-6

BENDA, J. A.: Sinfonias Nos. 7-12