The Smetana Quartet are a true legend. For over four decades (1945-1989), the ensemble gained critical acclaim and enthused audiences all over world, particularly in the UK, USA and Japan. They attained perfect chime and extraordinary flexibility in voice leading, resulting in part from their playing the entire repertoire by heart. The quartet performed Beethoven’s works throughout their existence – following Smetana, he was the composer on whose music they focused the most and whose complete quartets were in their repertoire from 1974 onwards. They explored some of Beethoven’s pieces for several years before including them in their concert programmes. In collaboration with a Supraphon team, in 1976 the ensemble embarked upon a colossal project, which in 1985 came to fruition with the release on Nippon Columbia of a recording of the complete Beethoven string quartets. Even though the past decade has seen significant changes pertaining to interpretation and technology, the Smetana Quartet’s account of Beethoven’s works is by no means a “museum exhibit”, with their vivacity and dynamism still enthralling today’s listeners. The recording, carefully digitally remastered from the original analogue tapes, is the very first release beyond Japan. Lovers of perfect sound are afforded the opportunity to listen to it Hi-Res 24 bit/192 kHz. © Supraphon

After a successful trilogy devoted to the concertos and trios of Schumann, the team assembled alongside the Freiburger Barockorchester and Pablo Heras-Casado could not ignore one of Beethoven’s most unusual works: the Triple Concerto. They bring this score to life as only true chamber musicians can, revealing its subtlest colours and balances. The trio transcription of the Second Symphony, which was supervised by the composer himself, judiciously completes this exploration of lesser-known Beethoven, in which intimacy mingles with grandeur. © harmonia mundi

Supraphon made these recordings for Nippon Columbia within a short timeframe, from June 1983 to April 1984, at the Rudolfinum in Prague. They capture the mature ensemble when it included the pianist Josef Hála, who in 1980 had replaced Jan Panenka. The trio’s sound was dominated by the strings, primarily the violin of Josef Suk, who also defined the interpretation principles. The singularity of the ensemble and their recordings alike rests in infallible technique, sonic refinement, admirable interplay and profound musicality devoid of any showboating. © Supraphon

Comprised of pianist Pauline Chenais, violinist Clémence de Forceville and cellist Angèle Legasa, Trio Sōra may well be a new name to many Qobuz listeners, when this is a debut album. That said, the name is likely to ring bells for anyone who keeps an eye on Europe's various young artist programmes and festival academies, because this young French ensemble's notable achievements of recent years include the Special Prize of the Verbier Festival Academy in 2018, and in 2020 a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. Spread across three opus numbers, Beethoven's piano trios begin with the three-strong Op. 1 set, published in 1795 when he was in his mid-twenties, and stylistically still firmly rooted in the Viennese Classicism of Haydn. However Romanticism is thoroughly in the picture by the time he returned to the genre in 1808, shortly after completing the “Pastoral” Symphony No. 6, penning the Op. 70 pair with its famous “Ghost” Trio No. 1. Finally there's the grand Op. 97 “Archduke” Trio of 1811 - technically another middle period work, but one which with the almost symphonic scope of its four movements and complex emotional world feels feels well ahead of its time. What Trio Sōra bring to the set is immensely enjoyable. In performance practice terms, these are broadly “modern” readings, employing unobtrusive vibrato, and even subtle portamento at the most Romantic and impassioned end of the set. Beethoven's stormy switchings on the flip of a coin between dynamic extremes are realised with both clarity and charm: pianissimos are true whispers, and while sforzandos and fortissimos come with punch, it's never at the expense of beauty of tone; with the Opus 1 set in particular, Viennese elegance reigns supreme. As a result, the impression across the set is overwhelmingly of lightness of touch, sprightly and precise articulation. Yet don't interpret that description as “one flavour”, because these readings are anything but; not least because these three musicians are not shy about making this music their own. Take the “Archduke” Scherzo, where playful metrical tugs and pushes, and the odd slight second-beat emphasis, sometimes create an almost off-kilter effect, which then serves as a brilliant foil to other sections of rhythmically steady, joyous swing. Also mention-worthy is the poetry and technical aplomb with which Pauline Chenais rises to the demanding piano role, her tone beguilingly soft-focus and pearly one moment, and brightly crisp the next. A strong first recording. Bravo! © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

It’s in a small comic filled with self-derision that the Modigliani Quartet describe their background, from the founding of the quartet in 2003 to its beginnings at the Berliner Philharmonie in 2017: First Prize Winners of the Young Concert Artists in New York, which opened the doors of the Carnegie Hall to them in 2006, Grand Prix Winners of Académie Charles Cros two years later with Haydn, artistic directors of the Evian Festival in 2014… An impressive and international pedigree for this quartet originally founded by four students of the Conservatoire de Paris keen to try their hands on the greatest chamber music repertoire. This new recording of the sole three quartets of Schumann, works created in one go in 1842 – two years after 1840, “the year of the Lied”, and one year before the two chamber masterpieces that are the Piano Quartet and the Piano Quintet. It’s true that in these quartets, Schumann doesn’t stray too far from Beethoven and even less from Mendelssohn (posthumously dedicatee), maybe the consequence of an inevitably more linear and contrapuntal writing, not as harmonic as the addition of a piano would allow. The fact remains that the Modiglianis capture these three singular works and restore their lines rather than looking for a dense, symphonic and pianistic texture that is not theirs. © SM/Qobuz

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was much admired by Haydn, Mozart, as well as young Beethoven, who piously treasured his Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments. The two men never met (Beethoven was eighteen when Johann Sebastian’s son passed away), but there are many affinities between them. Both of their works span the transition between two eras of music, and both shared a passion for harmonic exploration and formal studies, combined with a love of the bizarre. It was therefore only right to bring them together on the same album. In his first two symphonies, Beethoven created a world of his own, drawing on the relatively recent history of the musical form that Carl Philipp Emanuel and Joseph Haydn had helped to shape and develop fifty years earlier. Although the works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Beethoven presented here have little in common, they have a similar air of audacity and novelty about them, traits which have been wonderfully showcased by the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin under the baton of their “konzertmeister”, Bernhard Forck. An exciting example of mirroring works released by Harmonia Mundi as part of its monumental Beethoven edition commemorating the composer’s birth and death dates (2020 and 2027). © François Hudry/Qobuz

Issued complete for the first time, a new recording of Franz Liszt’s iconic piano transcriptions of the nine Beethoven symphonies. As the Italian pianist Giovanni Bellucci remarks in an extensive booklet introduction, this album is the fruit of study over the past 20 years and more, into the worlds of both Beethoven and Liszt and their meeting point in these transcriptions where the Hungarian composer sought to honour his forebear as the original leader of an artistic movement we now think of as Romanticism, where the composer places himself at the front and centre of his works. Liszt’s transcriptions diverged from the ready-made arrangements which publishers rapidly produced and reprinted to meet the demands of amateur and domestic audiences. Here, the symphonic world of Beethoven is not merely experienced as a distant echo but translated into the idiom of the virtuoso piano which swept across Europe during the latter half of the 19th century, led by Liszt and Clara Schumann. Thus in these performances, Bellucci seeks a kind of fidelity to the Romantic age of the transcriptions rather than the Classical age of the original works. Taking broad tempi and probing deeply into textures which, after all, condense the soundworld of an entire orchestra into the span of ten fingers, Bellucci presents an individual and compelling new vision of works which renew themselves at the hands of each new generation’s interpreters. The cycle reaches its climax with the Ninth, recorded live at the 2014 Lisztomania Festival in France, with the participation of the Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno and soloists Hana Škarková, Lucie Hilscherová, Michal Lehotský and Martin Gurbal. Other studio sessions have taken place in the famous Salle de Musique at La Chaux de Fonds in Switzerland, between 2018 and 2021. "In completing the project", Bellucci remarks, "I would like to borrow Franz Liszt’s words and make them mine, albeit just for a moment: "The piano is, for me, what the frigate is for the sailor, indeed, perhaps even more, because the piano is my word, is my life". In transcribing the 9 Beethoven Symphonies for piano solo Franz Liszt (1811-1886) not only made these symphonic masterworks available for domestic use but also demonstrated his immense creativity, insight, knowledge and pianistic resources. The work of a true genius, these transcriptions reveal the essential language and message of Beethoven, written down in pianism of the highest quality and difficulty, in this sense still valuable today. It takes a pianist of near superhuman powers and virtuosity to do justice to these scores. Giovanni Bellucci is such a pianist. Not only he "plays all the notes" but he is able to recreate the grandeur, drama, lyricism and intimacy of the original, presenting a monument made up of countless details. © Brilliant Classics