Beethoven: March for Military Music in F major WoO 18 "York March"

Shortly after completing his breathtaking Fifth Symphony, Beethoven composed incidental music for Goethe’s drama, Egmont.

While the Overture is well known, the remaining movements deserve no less attention as they chart the tragic course of Count Egmont’s rebellion against the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands and his ill-fated love for Clara, whose suicide Beethoven movingly portrays.

Two Marches, composed at around the same time, and his concert aria Ah! perfido, written a decade earlier, complement one of Beethoven’s most effective theatrical scores.

A legend in his lifetime for his interpretations of Beethoven, Herbert von Karajan recorded a large swathe of the composer’s oeuvre. On this specially priced 13-CD box set Karajan's complete Beethoven repertoire recorded by Deutsche Grammophon is presented for the first time – comprising his final, digital recordings of the Symphonies, the Piano Concertos (with Christoph Eschenbach and Alexis Weissenberg, nos. 2 - 5 specially licensed), Violin Concerto (Anne-Sophie Mutter) and Triple Concerto (with Mutter, Yo Yo Ma and Mark Zeltser), the Missa Solemnis, Overtures, Egmont Music, Wellington’s Victory, and a host of rarities, including the Grosse Fuge (arranged for orchestra), restored to the catalogue.

The packaging of this set is a capbox with 36-page booklet with new essay by Karajan biographer Richard Osborne.

To realise this set, Alexis Weissenberg’s recordings of the Piano Concertos nos. 2 – 5 have been licensed from EMI.