New Beethoven Group Discusses Great Recordings of the 32 sonatas

[George]

I have recently joined a group that has begun discussion of the 32 Beethoven Sonatas.

Link to the group: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/beethovensonatas/

The moderator has asked me to invite some friends to the discussion and I thought the easiest way to do this would be to post his invite here:
________________________

INVITE PIANO GROUPS

I have created a new Yahoo group called "Beethoven sonatas" and I would like to invite anyone interested to join. (This is the first time I've created a Yahoo group, so I don't know how to invite new members.)

The purpose of this Yahoo group is to discuss recordings of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in order to identify the "best" recordings. This group will also discuss what makes one recording better than another recording and whether there is such a thing as the "best" recording. (I offer my attempt at an objective definition of what is a "best" recording.)

For five years I have been engaged in a project to obtain every modern recording of every Beethoven piano sonata by every major Beethoven pianist and to listen to those recordings comparatively in order to select the "best" recordings. From over 1500 individual recordings, I have prepared a preliminary ranking of the "best" recordings of each Beethoven piano sonata. I offer my preliminary rankings simply as one music-lover trying to be helpful to other music-lovers.

Note #1 of the meeting gives general information, while note #2 provides my preliminary rankings of recordings of Beethoven Sonata #1, Op. 2, No. 1

Any feedback is welcome! My email address is richard.mathisen@ecunet.org.

Dick Mathisen