Musical careers last longer than they used to, and here, it is difficult to detect any weakening of the long-impressive technique of pianist Garrick Ohlsson, 74 years old, when this album was recorded in the summer of 2022. The feat is especially impressive in that all five of the Beethoven concertos (plus the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43, with no piano) were performed live within a single week. Ohlsson is backed by the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra under the direction of veteran conductor Donald Runnicles, who points out that he and Ohlsson had very little discussion about interpretation prior to the performances. It is here that Ohlsson's expertise is evident. He doesn't blaze any new paths in these works, but one has the feeling that he holds the performances, to borrow a phrase from John Le Carré, like a thrush's egg in his hand. His readings are simple in the best way. Sample the arresting opening of the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58; it is direct, yet there are micro shapings that bespeak long familiarity. In fact, it is in the first two concertos, where the lengthy expositions make it less possible for Ohlsson to control the flow of events, that are less effective. The partnership between Ohlsson and the orchestra, though, is lively throughout, and Runnicles gets excellent results from what is likely essentially a pickup group; the orchestra is moderately sized and agile. Superb live recording from Reference Recordings, discussed in detail in the booklet, is another draw. © 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

It takes only 10 discs to contain the complete solo Decca recordings of Radu Lupu, one of the great pianists of the late 20th century. It's also amazing that these few recordings stretch over a quarter of a century, from 1971 to 1995, making Lupu one of the most infrequently recorded of the great pianists; even Argerich and Michelangeli have outdistanced him. Yet even that is not the most amazing thing about this collection; it is the performances themselves, some of which are among the greatest ever made. Has any pianist ever topped Lupu's heroic account of Brahms' F minor Sonata, or his poetic readings of the composer's late piano works? Has any ever equaled, much less surpassed, his deeply inward performances of Schubert's Moments musicaux or his two sets of Impromptus? Has any account of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata ever glowed brighter, or any reading of the "Waldstein" Sonata ever been more ecstatically serene? And has any pianist ever caught the uncanny mixture of the playful, the romantic, and the diabolical in Schumann's Kreisleriana? Anyone interested in great piano playing should avail themselves of these superlative performances at their earliest possible opportunity.© TiVo

The scarcity of the Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman's studio recordings is a result of his high standards and, at the same time, makes for an excellent sales pitch. The pianist leaves nothing to chance, scrutinising scores in search of answers to his musical and organological questions concerning the style, the mechanics and possibilities of his instrument. He travels the world with his own Steinway pianos exclusively, dismantling them and reassembling them himself for each concert.A first complete set of Beethoven's Concertos was started for the same publisher in Vienna with Leonard Bernstein in 1989, but this was unfortunately interrupted by Bernstein's death, which obliged Zimerman to conduct the first two concertos from his keyboard. The closeness of his Beethovenian vision to that of Sir Simon Rattle has led him to undertake a second complete collection with the latter, this time recorded in London with the London Symphony Orchestra. Krystian Zimerman's hyper-articulate playing, which gives exceptional legibility to Beethoven's lines, shines in this varied corpus, which starts at the end of the eighteenth century and goes straight into Romanticism. Around him, the fabulous English musicians sing and carry on their dialogues under Rattle's very lyrical direction. This conductor is particularly attentive to the pianist's slightest intentions, and there are many cues to watch out for.While the global pandemic did not change musical approaches, it did profoundly alter the physical layout of the orchestras. In their splendid home of St. Luke's, an eighteenth-century church in the heart of London that was abandoned in the early 1960s after a terrible landslide and rehabilitated for the London Symphony Orchestra in the early twenty-first century, the musicians were forced to spread out according to strict health regulations. The protective screens between the music stands, the social distance of 1.5 metres between the strings and 2 metres between the woodwinds and the brass did not, however, detract from the coherence and sonic splendour of this recording. “Sometimes it feels like blowing smoke signals over a mountain, but there’s something about the effort that almost suits Beethoven. The struggle is part of his style,” Rattle said. “After all the anxiety and uncertainty that the pandemic gave us, it was such a release and such a joy for us to play Beethoven again. We were able to do this at a time when so many musicians had been prevented from working. It’s something I think we will never forget.” The musical message is communicated with an ineffable, expressive intensity. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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.

Recorded over the course of four concerts in Berlin in 2010, Sir Simon Rattle and “his” Berlin Philharmoniker successfully punctuate their complete collection of symphonies with these five concertos. While these were recorded before the symphonies, you can identify a distinct chamber music-like tonality, with an orchestra whose dimensions have been clearly reduced compared to the traditional size of the renowned Berlin ensemble. This integral work is first and foremost an orchestral delight thanks to the lyricism of the wind section and the silky characteristics of the strings. Far from being simply a support act to the soloist, the Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida, the orchestra instead seems to lead the operation with a speedy rhythm and an inimitable sense of musical rhetoric. Mitsuko Uchida almost appears to play modestly, never wanting to hog the spotlight, in a constant dialogue with the conductor. From the bonhomie of the first two concertos through to the Fifth (wrongly named the Emperor) which paved the way for the more romantic concertos, via the Fourth with its sublime Andante con moto which raises some metaphysical questions, this intimate performance cements this Beethovenian collection in its rightful era, lest we forget that these concertos were written in the first decade of the nineteenth century, in the midst of a triumphant Viennese classicism at a time when Joseph Haydn was writing his final few masterpieces and Napoleon’s Grande Armée was bombarding Vienna. With such a sonic perspective and a sound recording which never lets the piano become intrusive, these concertos which are often performed like works written fifty years afterwards, strike an instrumental balance and recover their true musical essence, which had slowly been beginning to disappear. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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

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

The award-winning duo ensemble formed by Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt are returning to the masterworks of European chamber music with this new album that includes Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770-1827) three violin sonatas from Op. 30. The expressive and intimate chamber music recordings by the star duo have gathered numerous awards and their previous album also received an ECHO-Klassik award in 2017. Beethoven wrote his three Violin Sonatas, Op. 30 in 1801 and 1802. They are relatively early works but already pointing towards the direction of Beethoven’s revolutionary 3rd Symphony, "Eroica", which was completed in 1803. Although the influence of Haydn is still visible, in these Sonatas Beethoven created movements in all the sonatas that are completely untypical and that had never existed before in this way. No wonder that these delightful works belong to the artists’ favourite works by the great composer. © Ondine

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