To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birthday with the entire world in 2020, the Carnegie Hall chose the French ensemble the Ébène Quartet to perform Beethoven’s Quatuors in their entirety. Honoured by this prestigious invitation, the four musicians decided to prolong this exceptional moment by playing this globally recognised music around the world, on all five continents in seven concerts between April 2019 and January 2020. The intellectual and emotional strength of Beethoven’s opus remains a force to be reckoned with, a humanist vector carried by the spirit of the Enlightenment. Over the course of this fantastic journey, the Ébène Quartet will record the quatuors in concerts given in Vienna, Philadelphia, Tokyo, São Paulo, Melbourne, Nairobi and Paris, their home ground. A film crew will follow the musicians on their world tour and will thereafter produce a documentary. The first milestone of this Beethoven around the World journey makes up this album, and was recorded in June 2019 in the Mozartsaal of the Vienna Konzerthaus. It contains the first two Razumovsky Quatuors, performed in the very city where they were composed in 1806. © François Hudry/Qobuz

After having recorded and performed all thirty-two of Beethoven’s Sonatas in concert, Mari Kodama, the Japanese pianist who grew up in Paris and was a student of Geneviève Joy-Dutilleux has now made a rather original contribution to the “Year of Beethoven”, with a selection of relatively unknown transcriptions, almost all of which are first recordings. This anthology includes piano interpretations of excerpts from Beethoven’s five string quartets in the style of the arrangements in vogue in the 18th and 19th centuries, which delighted many amateur musicians in private settings at a time when music only circulated through practice. Of course, these types of transcriptions are in great abundance, which Cyprien Katsaris demonstrated most tenaciously in his "A Chronological Odyssey" (Piano 21). Yet, what makes Mari Kodama’s choices so special here is that they have all been interpreted by Saint-Saëns, Balakirev and Moussorgski, who each added a little of their personality to the great maestro’s music. The grand finale of the album is a special treat as the last tracks are variations of Mozart’s Quintet with clarinet K. 581 in a transcription for fortepiano that was attributed to Beethoven and first published in Edinburgh in 1812 under the name of “ A Wonderful aria with variations of Mozart by Lewis van Beethoven”. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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

‘Miniature’ Beethoven! In our collective idea of the piano, Beethoven’s name is associated with the monument of the thirty-two sonatas, which have often been elevated to the status of the ‘New Testament’ beside the ‘Old Testament’ of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Yet, over a period of decades, the composer of Für Elise constantly returned to the genre of the bagatelle, which he called ‘trifles’ but which actually meant a great deal to him. In this small form par excellence, as in the sonata, Beethoven laid the foundations for a flourishing new genre, the piano miniature. Whether they last a few minutes or a few seconds, these Bagatelles are masterpieces! © harmonia mundi

These are not new recordings by pianist Paul Lewis but rather are extracted from his complete cycle of Beethoven's sonatas, recorded over the late 2000s and released in 2009. The idea of doing a "greatest hits" for Lewis is an intriguing one, for he has always been, if not exactly an "intellectual" pianist, one who prizes detail over big drama. The plan seems to have worked. The first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2 ("Moonlight"), has, for whatever reason, amassed at this writing more than 100,000,000 streams on streaming services, with the result that a lot of people are hearing some very fine Beethoven playing. Lewis does not sentimentalize anything in this famed first movement, but it has an unusually well-controlled glassiness. Even Für Elise, WoO 59, the ultimate Beethoven chestnut, receives a thoughtful and compelling performance. One might wonder if the Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106 ("Hammerklavier"), is really a famous Beethoven sonata, but Lewis is second to none in clarifying the textures of this thorny work, and new listeners could do worse than to start here with the much-discussed late Beethoven. For the Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 ("Pathétique"), and Piano Sonata No. 23 in F sharp minor, Op. 57 ("Appassionata"), one could find stormier readings, but these are of the sort that keep the listener returning again and again to absorb all the detail. This collection easily dispels any suspicion that Harmonia Mundi was merely in search of more profits from the original set. © James Manheim /TiVo

Familial chamber ensembles that manage to maintain a successful career seem to be more and more of a rarity nowadays. One noteworthy exception is the Kuijken Quartet, an ensemble made up of two generations of stellar string musicians. Most well-known for its period instrument, historical performance practice playing, it appears on this two-disc Challenge Classics set performing on modern instruments with less regard for what might be historically accurate and more what the musicians' "guts" tell them. This program features Beethoven's three Op. 59 "Razumovsky" Quartets, along with the sometimes overlooked Op. 29 String Quintet (for which Marleen Thiers, wife of the quartet's second violinist, joins in on the second viola part). While period practice may not be the primary goal here, the Kuijkens' keen musical insights still produce performances of staggering sophistication, detail, and vitality. One of the most appealing aspects of this set is the stunning, well-blended sound the four members produce, truly achieving the chamber music ideal of four instruments playing as one. Each of the members possesses a highly polished technique which together yields nearly flawless intonation, precise articulation, and a beautiful matching of vibrato across the score. The interpretations present the vigor and excitement of the quartets' outer movements along with the serene, powerful beauty of the inner Adagios in the first and second quartets and the quintet. With performances this moving and engaging, listeners will be left hoping the Kuijken Quartet continues with the remainder of Beethoven's quartets. © TiVo

This new album seems to confirm that the Girard Quartet, born of a litter of great French musicians, is now all grown up. Founded by members of the Ysaÿe Quartet, the Girard Quartet won the Geneva Competition in 2011, after taking the Prize of the Maurice Ravel Academy in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Currently residing at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium, they also work with the Singer-Polignac Foundation. The title of their fourth recording, "The Starry Sky" is borrowed from Philippe Hersant's Fourth Quartet, Der gestirner Himmel, written in 2012 "in response" to Beethoven's Quartet op. 59 n° 2 specifically the slow movement conceived as "a meditation on the harmony of the spheres, before the starry sky in the silence of the night." Like Beethoven, who of course features on this record, Hersant is expressing here, through a long, single movement, his "aspiration for a union of heaven and earth", through a resolutely accessible language which holds out its hand towards the Beethovian model, borrowing from it a few rhythmic and thematic cells, and to the late Romanticism of the Schönberg of the Verklärte Nacht, another great nocturnal meditation. Note also the magnificent cohesion of the Girard Quartet, as well as its accumulated power of expression and its superb ensemble sound, bolstered by the use of four instruments made between 2014 and 2016 by the Parisian manufacturer Charles Coquet, whose work is inspired by the great artisanal producers of stringed instruments from centuries gone by. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Oh no, no, no: this is absolutely not a re-release of one of the many recordings which Murray Perahia made of Beethoven over the decades. This here is something completely new, made in 2016 and 2017, of two radically contrasting sonatas: the Fourteenth of 1801, which Rellstab nicknamed "Clair de lune" in 1832, while Beethoven merely dubbed it Quasi una fantasia, and the Twenty Ninth of 1819, Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier, written after several barren years. Perhaps, consciously or not, Perahia has coupled two works, one "before" and the other "after" - after all, he himself has known his fair share of fallow years, following a hand injury which removed him from the stage from 1990 to 2005. Whether or not it's true, it's certainly tempting to imagine. Either way, like Beethoven, Perahia made a storming return, as shown in this recent performance, in which vigour alternates with moments of intense introspection, always impeccably phrased and articulated, and deeply musical. Clearly all those years in which he concentrated almost exclusively on the works of Bach as a training regime while he waited for recovery seem to have in fact been immensely fruitful. © SM/Qobuz

With this album, pianist Tanguy de Williencourt offers an original vision of Beethoven. The album includes various pieces, some with a “Webernian” length of 30 seconds to 2 minutes, consisting in skits into the musician’s imagination, like ripped off pages of the genius’ diary. In the time of Beethoven, French was in fashion. As their French inspired name indicates, the Bagatellen were sometimes light, sometimes erotic. Beethoven’s Bagatellen, as a name (more than a form) punctuated the composer’s entire career. Yet, he referred to them as his ‘Kleinigkeiten’, little things. A series of charming and dedication pieces (Für Elise), they, nevertheless, became almost prophetic in 1825, when Beethoven’s language resolutely began to foresee the future. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Together with the Berlin-based Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester (DSO) Mari Kodama and her husband Kent Nagano have now completed the recording of all of Beethoven's piano concertos by jumping, as it were, back in time twice: the last element of this recording series that has spanned more than 13 years was Beethoven's concerto "number nought" (WoO 4) – personally edited by Mari Kodama from the autograph score. The original manuscript of this piano concerto is kept at the State Library in Berlin. This is not a completed score, because there is no orchestration. That said, Beethoven annotated the short score, especially in the first two movements, with indications as to which instrument was to play which part. The orchestra score which is available today was written in the early twentieth century based on those annotations. The only problem is: "Today, armed with the knowledge we now have acquired about the young Beethoven, we would perform this concerto quite differently in places," explain Mari Kodama and Kent Nagano in unison. They therefore present a very personal adaptation that emerged during rehearsal with the orchestra and at the recording sessions, and which reflects Kodama's and Nagano's individual image of Beethoven. They aim to make audible the exuberant freshness and urgent sense of awakening in the young, almost childlike Beethoven's writing shortly before his artistic powers were to burst forth, the joie de vivre and vital energy in a style that owes something to the playfulness of both Haydn and Mozart. That is Mari Kodama's intention, and she plays it in precisely such a versatile manner. Combined with the classical canon of the piano concertos nos. 1–5, the resulting comprehensive edition is complemented by the Triple Concerto for piano, violin and cello op. 56, the Rondo WoO 6 and the Eroica Variations op. 35, offering insight into the artist's longstanding involvement with her musical companion Ludwig van Beethoven. And the recordings of his works seem to lead the listener through the composer's life. "If you play all of them, it is like accompanying Beethoven on a journey through his life," explains Mari Kodama, and Kent Nagano adds: "You acknowledge the musical genius and at the same time you recognise the development of European music, because Beethoven was undoubtedly its pioneer." He led the way in changing the structure, form and harmony of music, just as there was an equally radical shift in the world around him; after the French Revolution society and business and the incipient industrial revolution began to alter the way people lived. "He is and remains an optimist, someone who can do no other than believe in what he wishes to communicate to us through his music," explains Kodama. She says this helps her. The fact that she herself is an optimist can partly be attributed to Beethoven. Kodama, Nagano and the DSO – one might imagine them almost as a trio where all the musicians have blind faith in each other and are therefore able to produce a degree of musical intensity that brings the young Beethoven back to life. © Berlin Classics

When it comes to French string quartets, Autumn 2021 has been notably nocturnal-flavoured. First there was the superb “round midnight” from the genre’s rockstars, Quatuor Ébène – a programme of music for after dark that paired Dutilleux’s Ainsi la nuit of 1976 with a quartet arrangement of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (1899), bridged by a new jazz-infused work by the quartet’s cellist-composer Raphaël Merlin. Now here’s “Not all cats are grey” from one of France’s most exciting new generation quartets, Quatuor Hanson, whose own night-themed trio of works has the Dutilleux sitting at its climax, preceded by Bartók’s String Quartet in A minor of 1917 – metaphorically representing a dark time for Europe, and studied by Dutilleux before he wrote his own quartet – and Ligeti’s String Quartet No 1 “Métamorphoses nocturnes” of 1954. Beyond having one of the smile-eliciting album titles of the year, “Not all cats are grey” also thoroughly delivers on its actual contents. If you’re wondering what the title actually refers to, it’s the fact that at night time all cats suddenly look grey on account on it being more difficult to distinguish separate colours, and that in the same way it can be all too easy to hear so-called contemporary music as all sounding the same. The Hanson’s mission is therefore to bring out the myriad of contrasts between these three major works via a multi-hued night time musical landscape representing everything from sleep, dreams and hallucination, to liveliness and intense movement; and they’ve very much achieved that aim. First thing to say is that there’s a very satisfying balance to the programme’s overall architecture, thanks to their having placed the Dutilleux and Ligeti – each a series of micro-movements heard as a single movement which organically develops an initial motivic idea – as their two-book-ends; and you’re hearing an equal degree of architecture across the interpretations themselves, on both the macro and micro level. Tone and articulation-wise, there’s just the right, brightly crystal-edged, lucid-textured sound that served them so well in their Diapason Award-winning Haydn recording of 2019. Favourite snapshots? How about the exhilarating bite, folky kick, momentum and technical precision of the Ligeti’s Vivace, capriccio; then the similar qualities they bring to the even more obviously folky strains of the following Bartók’s central Allegro molto capriccioso; the slender-toned delicacy with which they open the Bartók’s Lento, and the dramatic tautness with which its long lines then proceed; the gorgeous gossamer wisps heard in the Dutilleux’s Nocturne 2, and the nimbleness, colouristic range and sense of organic progression they bring to that entire work’s exploration of different sound effects. Essentially, I won’t be surprised if this album ends up picking up an award or two, too. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz