Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-32 (Complete) - download (MP3 & FLAC)

Beethoven has always been a part of the concert repertoire of exclusive Chandos artist Louis Lortie, and it rose again to the top of his agenda as he prepared to complete his recorded cycle of the composer’s sonatas earlier this year. Sonatas Nos 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31 and 32, newly recorded, will be released for the first time as part of a box set of the entire canon, which will be available at the bargain price of 9 CDs for the price of 3.

This box set of the complete piano sonatas is a must for all lovers of Beethoven and great piano playing. The compositions are bold and beautiful, challenging, witty and fresh. They seem to encompass all aspects of human sensibility and aspiration, and the superb playing of Louis Lortie takes the music to another level. His recording of the composer’s ‘Eroica’ Variations, which won an Edison Award, was described by Gramophone in glowing terms:

‘His account… is spacious and magisterial, virile yet sensitive, and the wide range of dynamic nuance and keyboard colour is there to illumine Beethoven’s textures and not highlight the artist’s pianism. He succeeds in communicating the power of Beethoven’s imagination: the part-writing in the fugue emerges with a masterly clarity, and is beautifully weighted and balanced.’

Highlights among the new recordings are that of the sublime Sonata No. 30, composed in 1820 – 22, which displays all the characteristics of Beethoven’s last creative phase: rich harmonic structures, a fascination with intricate counterpoint, and a strict adherence to classical and baroque forms. Also worthy of a separate mention is Sonata No. 22, a veritable study in contrasts. Its two complementary themes – a gracious, dignified ‘feminine’ theme resembling a minuet, and a stamping, assertive, ‘masculine’ theme – gradually influence one another in the course of the movement until they become thoroughly integrated and combined in the final passages.

The critically acclaimed recording by Gerhard Oppitz of the 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas (previously only available separately) is now available as a boxed set. Piano News wrote: "Oppitz approaches the opening of the ”Waldstein” Sonata at exactly the correct speed and with the correct colouring: precise but not detached, passionate but always transparent……”

On the wake of the box-set featuring some live and studio recordings of Dino Ciani (CDS 413/1-6), which has met with great success, Dynamic releases another publication dedicated to the artistry of this fine pianist, who died tragically and prematurely almost thirty years ago.

This new set of nine CDs holds the entire cycle of Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas which Ciani performed at the Unione Musicale in Turin in eight concerts, from 4th October to 29th November 1970, which were recorded but never published before. Listening to these recordings from over thirty years ago we clearly perceive the wealth, complexity and, in many ways, the novelty of Dino Ciani’s approach as a performer. With impressively profound introspection, Dino Ciani follows the extraordinary journey that leads him from opus 2 on to opus 111. It is perhaps in the last Sonatas that Ciani gives of his best. In a sort of ecstasy of sound, he exalts and savours the cantabile element in these compositions. Then he abandons himself unguardedly as he unleashes a musical force that seems to create itself out of nothing and to find its rules and justification in itself alone. Extraordinary are also Ciani’s encores: the Finale of the Hammerklavier Sonata, with dizzying counterpoint passages, and the entire Moonlight Sonata, opus 27 n. 2.

The enclosed booklet contains unpublished photos.

This collection was recorded live across eight concerts at the Staatsoper unter den Linden, Berlin in June and July 2005.

Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas have been at the heart of Daniel Barenboim’s musical life since childhood and through his remarkable career, Barenboim has gained a unique understanding of Beethoven’s music. Having performed much of the composer’s solo, chamber, orchestral and operatic repertoire, Barenboim’s performances of these varied and complex works give a fascinating perspective into one of music’s greatest geniuses from one of the most gifted and complete musicians of our time.

Having first performed a complete cycle of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in Tel Aviv in 1960, Barenboim has repeated the feat many times around the world, most recently at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, in 2002, at the Vienna Musikverein in 2004 (when he also conducted the Palestine Youth Orchestra in its inaugural concert and played a Beethoven sonatas concert in Ramallah), at the Berlin Staatsoper in 2005, and at both La Scala, Milan, and London’s Royal Festival Hall in 2008.

Barenboim says of the Beethoven piano sonatas: “This music encompasses everything that a great human being is capable of – in thought, in feeling, in intuition, in temperament, in character. All the different attributes of the human condition are contained in this music.”

Reissue of the celebrated 1971 RCA LP set. Digitally refurbished.