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

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

First of all, what a line-up of Berlin's top musicians and regular collaborators Emmanuel Pahud has assembled here: Daniel Barenboim on piano; Pahud's fellow Berlin Philharmonic principals, concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto and violist Amihai Grosz; flautist Silvia Careddu, founder member of the Alban Berg Ensemble Wien; and Sophie Dervaux, former Berlin Philharmonic Principal Contrabassoon and now Principal Bassoon of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Vienna Philharmonic. Plus, they've recorded in Berlin's Pierre Boulez Saal, i.e. one of the best possible places to hear chamber music, with its stunning combination of warmth and clarity. Moving on to the musical contents, and Beethoven's slim body of chamber works for flute is all confined to his early career. In fact so early that two of the works here date from his Bonn period (during his late teens and early twenties) as a piano teacher and court musician: the posthumously published Trio in G for piano, flute and bassoon of 1786, and the Allegro and Minuet in G WoO 26 for two flutes of 1792, written for his law student friend, J.M. Degenharth, and featuring a dedication page playfully informing the reader that it was written “in the evening”. Also on the menu is the Serenade in D Op. 25 for flute, violin and viola, sketched in 1797 and completed in 1801. What this means in stylistic and mood terms is sunnily charming entertainment music cast firmly in Beethoven's earliest post-Haydn language, and far removed from the emotional turbulence of his later years; in other words, absolutely perfect music to be gifted with at the dog end of Covid-wrecked 2020, and especially when the playing from everyone is so joyously elegant, crisp, bright and responsive. Still, Pahud clearly thought that a little more meat was required for the curtain raiser. So all the above is preceded by his own flute transcription of the “Little G Major” Sonata in G for violin and piano of 1802: still a sunnily carefree world, but equally a sparkingly sharp-witted one, piling on fresh interest at every turn. It also sits very well on the flute, so perhaps further transcriptions might come our way in the future via Pahud's hand. In the meantime, from this one we can enjoy the dainty athletic pep and lucid textures Pahud and Barenboim bring to its outer movements, the lyric grace and sensitivity of their central Tempo di Menuetto, and overall Barenboim's deft shaping, and in partnership terms their mutual sensitivity and sense of equality. In short, a great addition to the Beethoven recordings catalogue. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

Due respect is rarely given to Beethoven's Septet, which he completed in 1800 - preceded by two first piano concertos, ten first Sonatas for piano, half a dozen quartets, and finished around the same time as the First Symphony - but had the composer wanted to, he could have made this Septet into a symphony in its own right, such is the richness and depth of the material, not to mention its forty-minute running time. What's more, Toscanini performed it in 1951, giving the string parts to the NBC Orchestra, without changing the structure of the wind section (clarinet, horn, bassoon). That said, its architecture across its six movements, is more like that of a serenade than the standard form of a symphony, which might explain how infrequently it is performed these days, beyond its unusual formation. The final movement contains one of Beethoven's smoothest themes - the second - with a level of emotion that prefigures the immortal theme of the Ninth. The soloists of the Montréal Symphony Orchestra don't hold back. To complement the rest of the programme, they offer us  Till Eulenspiegel einmal anders (Till Eulenspiegel, different for once, in our best english!), a delicious re-writing of a symphonic poem by Strauss for the same seven musicians who perform Beethoven's Septet. We only regret that this adaptation has made several pointless cuts to the score, on an album that only lasts 48 minutes - we could have easily enjoyed the entire Till. But there we are. © SM/Qobuz

Three world-class soloists gathered in Paris to celebrate the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, in the year that marks the 250th anniversary of his birth, and recorded the only two Beethoven Trios for Piano, Clarinet and Cello, his Opus 11 and Opus 38. This is the third album for Paraty label by Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro, one of the great European pianists of his generation and artistic director of the DSCH – Shostakovich Ensemble, who now appears with celebrated clarinettist Pascal Moraguès, first Solo Clarinet of Orchestre de Paris since 40 years, and acclaimed cellist Adrian Brendel, which discography includes a Beethoven monographic album with legendary pianist Alfred Brendel, his father, with a reference recording of Beethoven Sonatas for Cello and Piano. This album was recorded at La Seine Musicale, near Paris. © Paraty

One may be puzzled initially to see Mozart, Schumann (twice), and Webern on a program in a cycle devoted to the complete variation sets of Beethoven, but this is a typically ambitious idea from pianist Cédric Tiberghien and the music of the other composers mostly has connections to Beethoven. Schumann's Etudes in Variation form on a Theme by Beethoven, WoO 31, are underrated indeed, weaving quotations from several other Beethoven symphonies into its basic material from the slow movement of the Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92. Perhaps the Webern Variations, Op. 27, are the odd piece out here; it is debatable whether they are variations at all, but in a way, the pieces by the other composers strengthen Tiberghien's main thesis, which is that Beethoven's variations are fully serious works that shouldn't be underestimated. His cycle opens with the Variations and Fugue in E flat major, Op. 35, called the "Eroica Variations" because they use a theme that recurred in the finale of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 55. Tiberghien gives these a big, sweeping performance that suggests the work's prominence in Beethoven's output. Yet even the smaller sets, based on simple operatic arias of the day, have some weight in Tiberghien's performances, which indicate ways in which Beethoven worked out problems of register and harmony in these works. By the end, when Tiberghien offers a transcendent performance of Schumann's Geistervariationen (the last work Schumann wrote, already in the grip of madness), the listener has the feeling of having been on quite a ride. One is excited to discover the content and structure of Tiberghien's next volume, which presumably will include the Diabelli Variations, Op. 120.© James Manheim /TiVo

Performances of music by Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn have grown much more common, but they are still often paired with the male figures in their lives, and it is often their music in small genres, the lied and the small piano piece, that is emphasized. This release from the Nash Ensemble is corrective in this regard, and it shows the two composers at their most ambitious. In smaller pieces, the two composers were influenced, respectively, by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn, and entered into interesting dialogues with them. However, the influences for the present works come from elsewhere. Hear the delightful Scherzo from the gentle Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17, of Clara Schumann, with its pizzicato cello; it suggests a charming operatic interlude by Weber. With the Fanny Mendelssohn Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 11, and especially her String Quartet in E flat major, the influence is Beethoven, both in general mood and in specific details like the fugal passage in the Allegretto second movement of the quartet, akin to the finale fugue in the Beethoven String Quartet in C minor, Op. 59, No. 3. Felix Mendelssohn disliked this work and considered it formally sloppy; one can see where he was coming from and yet think that Fanny got closer than Felix did, on all but a handful of occasions, to what Beethoven was all about. The Nash Ensemble, beyond their usual clean work, catches the particular drive of these works in their weighty performances. Although the church sound is not ideal, this sounds very much like a reference recording of these works.© TiVo

What exactly is this “new path” (neuer Weg) that the infamous fortepianist Andreas Staier is inviting us on with this new album published as part of harmonia mundi’s vast Beethoven 2020-2027 project? All the works offered here were composed at the dawn of the 19th century by a young tempestuous composer who was conscious of his worth but also of his weakness as he began to feel the first effects of the deafness that would go on to take over his life. This recital is mind blowing from the first few beats of the thundering Sonata No. 16 in G major. With his crystalline, weightless fortepiano built by Mathias Müller around 1810, Staier seems to show us how much this frail instrument labours to show the full spectrum of the composer’s genius, boundary-breaking as it was at the time. The three sonatas and two series of variations that make up this programme were all published in 1802, at a time when Beethoven wanted to “start something new” at the turn of the century after the slew of revolutionary torment that had shaken Europe to its core. It was a new way of thinking for a composer who spoke with a more authoritative tone than his predecessors, in the “first person”. Andreas Staier is without a doubt one of the best possible performers to portray this new era of musical and artistic thinking that arose during a troubled time (the rise of Napoleon) when the clarity of language rivalised the closing off of individuality. © François Hudry/Qobuz

With this new series entitled ‘Salon de musique’, Alpha presents recordings made by artists who have enlivened the Festival of Salon de Provence for some years now: the pianist Eric le Sage, who has made many recordings for Alpha, the clarinettist Paul Meyer etc… with cellist Claudio Bohórquez, they have now put two Beethoven trios on disc. By 1798, the year Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Trio for piano, clarinet and cello op.11, he was already well-known in Vienna as a remarkable improviser and an ambitious young composer. the piece was clearly aimed at the enlightened aristocracy, as well as competent musical amateurs. This did not prevent the critics, though universally positive, from judging the score to be over-complex in places. Dedicated to the Empress Marie-Theresa of Austria, the Septet was published in 1802 by Hofmeister, and on being well-received it was then rearranged for various combinations. Beethoven himself made a version for clarinet, cello and piano, op.38 in E Flat major – the one recorded here. © Alpha Classics