Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 ‘Emperor' & Choral Fantasy, Op. 80

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The Choral Fantasy is a fascinating work in its own right: an amalgam of concerto, variations and cantata…[this is] as fine a performance as you are likely to find — BBC Music Magazine, September 2016, 4 out of 5 stars

Release Date: 23rd Oct 2015
Catalogue No: PSC1285
Label: Simax
Series: Beethoven Orchestral Works
Length: 53 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat Major “Emperor”;I Allegro

Work length18:51

Album only

Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Boris Berezovsky, Thomas Dausgaard

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat Major “Emperor”;II Adagio un poco mosso

Work length7:09

$1.50

$2.10

Thomas Dausgaard, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Boris Berezovsky

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat Major “Emperor”;III Rondo: Allegro

Work length9:41

$1.50

$2.10

Thomas Dausgaard, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Boris Berezovsky

Beethoven: Fantasia in C minor for piano, soloists, chorus and orchestra

Work length18:17

Album only

Thomas Dausgaard, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Boris Berezovsky

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The twelfth and final volume of Beethoven’s Complete Orchestral Works in Simax’s edition - a pairing of the ‘Emperor’ Concerto and the Choral Fantasy - by Thomas Dausgaard, Boris Berezovsky and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra finds all the musicians on top form.

Though close to each other in date, the two works on this disc, which are the last in which Beethoven wrote for piano and orchestra together, are in other respects quite dissimilar. The Fifth Piano Concerto known (almost exclusively within the English-speaking world, incidentally) by the nickname of the ‘Emperor’ was Beethoven’s last completed work in the genre. It is a standard piano concerto, or so it seems to listeners today, because it was uniquely influential in defining the form for the next 100 years. To its first audiences it must have seemed highly individual and even idiosyncratic.

The Choral Fantasy, on the other hand, appears an unorthodox, even unique conception, much freer in form, as befits the title “fantasy” which Beethoven chose for it. Yet both are entirely characteristic of the composer in their deployment of a structure that served the purposes of the content of the work itself to its greatest advantage.

Reviews

September 2016

The Choral Fantasy is a fascinating work in its own right: an amalgam of concerto, variations and cantata…[this is] as fine a performance as you are likely to find

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 ‘Emperor' & Choral Fantasy, Op. 80

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