Beethoven: Bagatelles (6), Op. 126 - SACD

Gary Cooper: "The decision to use a historic Viennese instrument for this recording - built in the very year Beethoven completed his Diabelli Variations – is, in one sense, self-explanatory. Newly & magnificently restored by Edwin Beunk, the Walter und Sohn grand piano featured here is both a beautiful & charming instrument. In approaching the timeless, expansive sound world of Beethoven's late, great works, any piano is constantly tested; historic instruments not far off two hundred years old additionally so! This is the first commercial recording, to my knowledge, which attempts to place this particular masterpiece firmly in the sound-world of the early 1820s, when it was conceived and first played."

In his extensive liner notes, based on many letters and historical documents, Gary Cooper wonders why Beethoven chose to continue composing, after the onset of deafness. (...) ‘I cannot imagine that I am alone in feeling both puzzled & amazed by this, as well as gratitude that he did so, since many of his very finest, most sublime works stem from this later period. (...) The key word here is imagination: while we imagine Beethoven should be pitied, I also imagine he pitied others since, through deafness, he was no longer prey to the prosaic nature of general conversation which he abhorred above all else; and in this new-found world of profound silence, his fecund imagination created nothing but unadulterated music, without reference to anyone but himself, and his maker. All great art, in Beethoven's own philosophy, is simply a process of a 'returning to the divine when achieved'.

The superb reviews have proved what a worthwhile project this complete Beethoven sonata cycle has been. The pièce de résistance of this volume is the “Hammerklavier” sonata. “Michael Korstick is one of the great pianists of our time: a virtuoso and sound wizard – and one of those rare, detail-oriented artists.” Concerti

On this new disc, Ronald Brautigam now embarks on the second leg of his traversal of Beethoven’s complete music for solo piano. In this volume he gives us the complete Bagatelles, and includes not only the three sets published during Beethoven’s life time, but also thirteen further pieces composed throughout Beethoven’s career, between 1795 and 1825.

Among Beethoven’s Bagatelles – whether official or unofficial ones – are pieces that may originally have been intended as movements of piano sonatas, as well as pieces of an extreme brevity, such as the 11 seconds long Allegramente, No. 10 of Elf Neue Bagatellen, Op.119.

Previous volumes in this cycle have been highly praised by reviewers around the world: performances of the Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas (BISSACD1573) which were described by Gramophone as ‘stunning … technically breathtaking, stylistically astute, emotionally intense and musically alive in every moment’