The violinist Leonidas Kavakos has many strings to his bow: an acclaimed soloist, he conducts orchestras – his first love – and is a chamber musician. This double album bears witness to the skills of this musical polymath who knows his Beethoven. He functions here both as soloist and conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, which boasts over 60 musicians. In line with the practices of the composer's lifetime, this choice highlights the "egalitarian" style of the concerto's writing. While a virtuoso piece for sure, this score is more than just a pedestal for the soloist: the latter works closely with their peers, and shares every theme with them. Leonidas Kavakos gives a magisterial performance at the head of this impressive orchestra and brings forth some sumptuous nuances from the players, commanding their sustained and close attention. Heir to Viennese Classicism, Beethoven opened the way to the Concertos of Brahms or Sibelius, in which the solo violin often accompanies the orchestra with acrobatic embellishments. As agile as he was at the start of his career, the soloist doesn't perform Kreisler's famous cadence, but rather brings to life what Beethoven published for piano. This moment of complicity with the orchestra continues in camera in the Septet, Op. 20, the first score of the kind, in which the musicians sound like a small orchestra; and then finally in the 6 National Airs with Variations, Op. 105 for piano and flute (or violin ad libitum). Commissioned by a Scottish publisher when Beethoven was composing his Ninth Symphony, these miniatures for amateurs sound just as fresh as their dancing melodies. A very fine record which shows Beethoven in a less stormy light than usual. © Elsa Siffert/Qobuz

Anyone who aspires to a professional career as a violinist must eventually reckon with Beethoven's Violin Concerto. This exacting instrumental jewel demands not only technical mastery, but also an extraordinary sense of lyricism and emotion from those who seek to make it their own. It is not surprising that, over the centuries, famous virtuosos have never stopped reimagining and recording this masterpiece in order to pass it on to posterity: Fritz Kreisler, Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Isabelle Faust... Now, it is in their footsteps - rather intimidatingly, let's admit - that a new, irresistibly charismatic voice has now arrived.Only 20 years old, María Dueñas possesses the talent and radiance of a long-standing virtuoso. She grew up in Granada and studied in Dresden and Vienna with Boris Kuschnir. Her first major success came in 2021, when she won first prize in the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin Competition. That same year, she attracted the attention of Deutsche Grammophon, with whom she soon signed a contract. It was with this label that she presented her first album, Beethoven and Beyond."Beethoven's Violin Concerto has been with me at the most important moments of my life," says María, for whom it seems only natural to dedicate the first chapter of her discography to this work. She had the chance to record her œuvre with Manfred Honeck and the Vienna Symphony at the beginning of 2023, during a concert held in a hall with a rich history: the Vienna Music Hall - a 'home' debut, as it were. But how to stand out from the crowd? "With the Beethoven concerto, you can't show off your virtuosity, only yourself. And only sound can reveal it.”It was precisely this sound that convinced us! But that's not all: to really add her own touch to the work, María composed her own cadenzas. The album also includes cadenzas by five other famous virtuosos (Louis Spohr, Eugène Ysaÿe, Camille Saint-Saëns, Henryk Wieniawski and Fritz Kreisler) as well as works for violin and orchestra by each of these composers. María takes up the Concerto with a unique sincerity and authenticity and manages to shed a new light on Beethoven, that of her own time. Let us be the first to warn you; instead of Beethoven and Beyond, there will soon be María Dueñas and Beyond. No doubt about it, this is a Qobuzissime! Lena Germann/Qobuz

The "Beethoven for Three" series, featuring piano trio arrangements of Beethoven's symphonies, offers one or more symphonies together with one of the composer's actual piano trios. The three performers, violinist Leonidas Kavakos, pianist Emanuel Ax, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, could probably have sold albums on name recognition alone, but they deliver performances worthy of their names. Certainly, arrangements of Beethoven's symphonies for smaller forces were common enough in the 19th century, but the ones here, by composer Shai Wosner, are new and frequently quite artful; hear the delicate slow introduction to the first movement of the Symphony No. 4, Op. 60, where Wosner interprets the original rather than straining to duplicate it. The highlight on this volume may come with the masterful reading of the Piano Trio in B flat major, Op. 97 ("Archduke"), where the players' familiarity with each other really shows. Sample the Scherzo, where there is not a note that isn't distinctively articulated in some way, and the fascinatingly deliberate opening to the finale. Sony Classical contributes impressive engineering from a new studio venue at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. This album breathes new life into the all-star format, and it made classical best-seller lists in the spring of 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo

The late Beethoven recordings of pianist Mitsuko Uchida have been career makers, and it is cause for celebration that she has capped them with the 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120, a work that perhaps poses deeper interpretive challenges than any of the late sonatas. The Variations often show a kind of rough humor, and a performer may pick up on that, or the player may deemphasize the humor and seek out the epic qualities of the Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109, and Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111. Uchida does neither. The outlines of her usual style, high-contrast and a bit dry, are apparent, but she does not let them dominate her reading. What Uchida realizes is that the abrupt transition from humor to the deepest existential ruminations is part and parcel of Beethoven's late style, and she works to hone the particular character of each Beethoven variation. Her left hand, as usual, is strikingly powerful, and this brings out many striking details (consider the stirring variation 16). The trio of slow minor variations toward the end are given great seriousness but are not in the least overwrought; Uchida achieves an elusive Olympian tone through the final variations. There is much more to experience here, for each variation is fully thought out, but suffice it to say that this is one of the great performances of the Diabelli Variations.© TiVo

The Karajan Official Remastered Edition is a series of remasterings, from the original master tapes, of the finest recordings the Austrian conductor made for EMI between 1946 et 1984 including Karajan's first — and probably most thrilling — recording of the complete Beethoven Symphonies, made in the early 1950s (1951-1955) with London's Philharmonia Orchestra recently founded by Walter Legge. The recording of the Ninth Symphony is available here in stereo for the very first time, taken from original, unreleased tapes.

Conductor Manfred Honeck and his Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra recorded this live reading of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, in 2019. The marketplace was not exactly crying out for a new Beethoven's Ninth, even considering Honeck's strong track record in Classical-era repertory and Reference Recordings' increasingly fine results in Pittsburgh's Heinz Hall. However, it is absolutely worth experiencing Honeck's accomplishment here. The reading is distinctive and justified at length in a booklet essay by Honeck. His reading is fast, blazing, kinetic, with moments of high contrast, such as the ethereal third movement in its entirety, giving the listener breathing space. The first movement is quick, but Honeck relaxes the tempo just slightly as things proceed, making room for the brass to give their stentorian statements. The scherzo is very fast throughout, which has the effect of not stealing the delicate discourse from the slow movement, and the finale, though also fast, is never rushed. There is a certain logic in playing the work this way, inasmuch as the impossible-to-sing passages in the solos become just a bit less impossible at these speeds. Most impressive is that Honeck holds the musicians and the singers together at his blazing speeds; his 22:30 timing for the finale comes in more than two minutes faster than, say, Fritz Reiner's classic Chicago Symphony recording, and Honeck would have been even faster had he not offered a rather deliberate reading of the movement's recitative introduction. The soloists shine, and they deliver in a difficult reading that, at its best, feels like the cry of exultation Beethoven envisioned. The slightly American accent of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh is somehow not a detriment but an inducement here; there is real energy running through the performance and real joy. Reference Recordings has once again produced audiophile-quality sound whose depth and transparency are awesome even on everyday equipment. © TiVo

How intriguing! American conductor Robert Treviño has dedicated his debut release with Ondine to Beethoven’s symphony cycle. This is the first time the Finnish label has visited these landmarks of Western symphonic culture with a traditional Scandinavian orchestra, namely the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, which will celebrate its centenary in 2025. With a rather faded palette of sound-colour and a smooth legato, this is undoubtedly a traditional version of the nine symphonies that transports us back to an era of discographies from Herbert von Karajan and Otto Klemperer. But by no means does it belong in the past…Treviño has worked closely with the likes of Leif Segerstam, David Zinman and Michael Tilson Thomas, the two latter conductors having, incidentally, made many interventions of their own in the Beethovenian symphonies as each attempted to produce worthy reinterpretations. Tilson Thomas drastically reduced the number of musicians in his complete cycle for CBS, whilst David Zinman based his work on Jonathan Del Mar’s Barenreiter edition which restored many of the lost accents and phrases that had been altered from one hundred and fifty years of, at times, rather unscrupulous interpretations. Here, Robert Treviño’s interpretations are lyrical and rich, precise as regards polyphony and mindful of the need to find a balance rather than overstress the text. Treviño ensures that each section finds its proper place and doesn’t get lost in the overall composition, creating dialogues with a chamber-like aesthetic. The unusual “concertato” at the beginning of the last movement of Eroica is the prime example of this. © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz