Essential Albums
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Like his late quartets, Beethoven’s last five piano sonatas take form into new territory. The <i>A Major</i> (<i>No. 28</i>) is the most conventional, but you can already feel the ambition of utterance before the onslaught of the mighty <i>“Hammerklavier”</i> (<i>No. 29</i>), which Igor Levit, in his mid-twenties when this recording was made, takes on with astounding confidence. The final three sonatas find Beethoven refining and concentrating, before offering the essence of his message in long, powerful closing movements. By the last sonata—<i>No. 32</i> in the special key, for him, of C minor—he has reduced the form to two movements and explores a rhythmic language that seems to prefigure jazz. This is sublime music and sublime playing. - Beethoven’s colossal contribution to music resulted in every form he tackled being extended, developed and re-invented—and these two works are proof. His most famous piano concerto, No. 5, the <i>Emperor Concerto</i>, crowns his so-called Middle Period, and his Piano Sonata No. 28 (of 32) belongs to a group that transformed the piano sonata into something epic and exploratory. French pianist Hélène Grimaud offers performances marked by delicacy, power, drive and a sense of inevitability: a very modern-sounding Beethoven.
- Premiered in 1805, Beethoven’s <i>Symphony No. 3, “Eroica”</i> was a game changer. The symphony as a form would never be the same again. Originally dedicated to Napoleon, the work celebrates mankind’s extraordinary power, but when Napoleon had himself crowned emperor, the dedication was scratched out. It’s a huge, ambitious and magnificent creation, massive in scale, culminating in a theme-and-variation finale of shattering power. Daniel Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin recording from 1999 rises powerfully to the symphony’s challenges and—broad in tempo and fully alive to the work’s drama—is a pretty magnificent achievement, drawing impressive playing from this Berlin ensemble.
- This is one of those truly classic recordings, as powerful today as the day it was made. It landed in record stores in 1975 and was immediately hailed as an outstanding work. It also established Carlos Kleiber, son of another great conductor, Erich, as a musician of extraordinary talent. Collaborating with an orchestra that knows the work as well as any, Kleiber achieves what every conductor strives for—to make the music sound fresh and new. From the first bar, this performance crackles with electricity, and it surges on, buoyed by a very special magic. The <i>Seventh</i> also receives a performance of tremendous energy and, like the <i>Fifth</i>, it’s stunningly well played.
- As did so many of his works, Beethoven’s only violin concerto, premiered in 1806, changed the scale and perception of the form; its first movement, at about 25 minutes in duration, would accommodate some of Mozart’s in their entirety. But it’s not just about length. Beethoven’s work has symphonic ambitions, and its message is altogether weightier. It is, perhaps, the first great Romantic violin concerto, and its masterpiece status comes across impressively in Itzhak Perlman and Carlo Maria Giulini’s Gramophone- and Grammy Award-winning 1981 recording. Playing with his customary style and flair, Perlman is wonderfully expressive yet also highly dramatic, and Giulini is a superb partner. A classic recording.