Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37

Iconic pianist Radu Lupu first recorded for Decca in 1970 and his recorded repertory has centred round a small number of composers – chiefly Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mozart and Schumann.

This set brings together all of Radu Lupu’s concerto recordings for Decca.

Riccardo Muti’s achievement in Beethoven’s iconic cycle, and as Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra between 1980 and 1992, was summarised by Gramophone magazine: ‘… Magnificent in its blend of deliberation and energy … superb playing and a clear sense of discovery communicate themselves thrillingly to the listener’. A special additional feature of this set is Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, with Muti and the Philharmonia Orchestra accompanying the legendary Sviatoslav Richter.

Born in 1941, and currently chief conductor of the Orchestre de Paris, Christoph Eschenbach is one of today’s foremost conductor-pianists. This fascinating retrospective focuses on his brilliant early career as a pianist, when his searching musical intelligence, formidable technique and enthusiastic engagement with the music of his, and our, time produced many recordings that have stood the test of time.

Ates Orga’s detailed booklet notes offer a personal account from the man himself of his troubled start in life as an orphan, without the power of speech, learning to love and communicate through music. His quite fierce style is shaped by his admiration of great German intellectual musicians such as Edwin Fischer and Wilhelm Furtwängler, and finds an ideal analogue in the works of Beethoven, such as the Third and Fifth Piano Concertos, and the mighty ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata included in this set. Equally his refinement, evident nowadays in the French music he conducts in Paris and in his recordings with the Philadelphia orchestra, is reflected in his early portrayals of the romantic genius of Chopin (the Préludes) and Schumann (Kinderszenen).

His long friendship with Hans Werner Henze led the great German composer to write the Piano Concerto No.2 for Eschenbach, and this vast, Shakespeare-inspired work remains Henze at his boldest and most compelling, like Eschenbach himself, soaked in the German artistic tradition but finding new outgrowths from it.

Of appeal to connoisseurs of the piano and to new-music enthusiasts Will receive coverage in the serious musical press.

New coupling: no comparable set available

Listen to Ludwig von Beethoven’s symphonies no.’s 5, 6 and 9, Piano concertos 3 and 5, the violin concertos and romances, the Archduke trio and three piano sonatas.

recorded 1987-1990