Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 ‘Moonlight' (Mondschein Sonata)

Director: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

New Release on Euroarts's new sub-label: Recorded Excellence – Historical Value. The aim of the new series is to make accessible to music lovers and collectors top-quality recordings documenting extra-special concert performances that were hitherto unreleased or were no longer available, either for the first time or as re-releases on DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The main focus is on artists and repertoire. The new series will showcase defining concert moments of music history.

True HD picture! Digitally remastered and restored from 35mm film. Including intensive and high-quality audio and visual restoration.

In this recording, seven-time GRAMMY® Award-winning pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim tackles the so-called 'New Testament' of music, Ludwig van Beethoven's thirty-two piano sonatas.

Composed over twenty-five years and embodying the shift of musical taste from the Classic to the Romantic, their performance requires a musician of extraordinary versatility.

Daniel Barenboim is one such pianist – his recordings run the gamut from Bach and Mozart to Bruckner and Bartók. In following in the footsteps of such masters as Artur Schnabel, Barenboim truly shows himself to be among the greatest living musicians.

Bonus: 10 min. Interview with Daniel Barenboim, Vienna 2012, about the recording and the production of the complete Beethoven Sonatas Cycle 1980 - 1984.

Special Digipak packaging in a luxury slipcase.

Picture format: 1080i Full HD 16:9

Sound format: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 724 mins (714 mins Concert + 10 mins Interview)

Beethoven constantly calls into question and modifies the notion of time in sonata form. He never repeats himself. The thirty-two sonatas are like a voyage of initiation that runs throughout his creative career, displaying his endlessly inventive imagination.

After Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses and Sonata in B minor, François- Frédéric Guy offers us a complete cycle of Beethoven’s 32 sonatas, recorded in public at the Arsenal in Metz. This set is the first volume. ‘To play the complete Beethoven sonatas in public represents the most exhilarating project I have attempted, a tremendous artistic and human challenge. Beethoven explores sonic and poetic regions that in my view still remain, even in the early twenty-first century, his “exclusive territory”.’ François Frédéric Guy

Alfred Brendel may have disowned these recordings made for Vox Records in the dawn of his long career, but they still have the power to touch and to move, with a freshness of response that inevitably comes from a young man’s Beethoven, illuminated of course by the sovreign technique and musical intelligence that would only broaden and deepen as the years went by. Brendel has retired from performance now, but we can count ourselves lucky to have these mementoes of a performer for whom perfection and inspiration were never to be considered contradictory qualities or aims. Included in this set of superb value are the ‘named’ piano sonatas that anyone who comes to Beethoven, and to his piano music, quickly grows to love, and perhaps later to know and understand: The ‘Moonlight’ ‘Appassionata’ ‘Hammerklavier’ ‘Pathétique’ ‘Les Adieux’ ‘Tempest’ ‘Waldstein’ ‘Pastoral’.

Alfred Brendels first recording of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas are a landmark of youthful exuberance, a typically young man’s Beethoven, full of vigour, virtuosity and spontaneity. This set offers a generous selection of famous piano sonatas, all with nicknames, and therefore known by a wide audience.

Paul Lewis performed all the Beethoven piano sonatas on tour in the USA and Europe between 2005 and 2007 seasons, in parallel with his already acclaimed complete recording of the cycle for harmonia mundi. This is the third installment in the cycle that critics have predicted will become benchmark recordings.