Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 9 in E major, Op. 14 No. 1 - CD

In 1960, Richter gave a series of highly acclaimed concerts at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan which were recorded by Columbia Records. Regis presents an all Beethoven programme, taken from those concerts, which displays Richter’s Beethovenian credentials and which captures the sheer excitement that the concert series provoked at the time. Super budget price.

The brilliant 24-year-old Korean pianist HJ Lim, who signed an exclusive contract with EMI Classics in September 2011, has recorded her first project for the label, an ambitious traversal of the Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas. Lim, a Yamaha exclusive artist, recorded the sonatas on a Yamaha CFX concert grand piano in July and August 2011, grouping them into eight themes. The recordings will be released as four 2-CD sets over the course of 2012 with a complete deluxe box set to be available at the conclusion of the project.

Pianists who record the Beethoven sonatas cycle usually do so at the peak of long and storied careers. With this bold and controversial recording project, HJ Lim aims to prove that at the age of 24 she is ready to record the Beethoven sonatas now. She has the intelligence and artistic vision and her powerful performances have been captivating both traditional and new audiences. She has already performed complete Beethoven sonatas cycles over eight days each in France, Germany and Japan.

Among his generation of concert artists, pianist Awadagin Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and intensely involving performances in recital and with symphony orchestras. Early in his career, Pratt won the Naumburg International Piano Competition becoming the first African-American classical instrumentalist to win first prize in this international competition. Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, his second release from EMI Classics, Pratt tackles Beethoven’s late piano sonatas with a robust freshness and unaffected musicality. The result is intimate, playful, and charming.

1SACD+DVD

Born in Osaka, Mari Kodama left Japan as a child and grew up in Germany, Switzerland, France and England. She studied piano with Germaine Mounier at the Conservatoire National de Paris and later became a private pupil with Alfred Brendel. She has an international reputation for her musical sensitivity and outstanding virtuosity. Includes Bonus DVD.

The latest instalment in the Idil Biret Archive Beethoven Piano Sonatas series, this volume includes the famous Moonlight sonata.

Rare recordings made between 1931-1949

“Mr. Primakov is a good player. His musical thinking is well organized and has an appealing sense of urgency. The slow movement of the “Appassionata” was not too slow, as it often is, nor the finale too fast. He has the velocity to race at top speed through the latter’s whizzing coda, can handle the awkward physical pitfalls of the C minor Sonata and has a genuine feel for the mysteries of its last moments.” New York Times on a concert performance by Vassily Primakov