Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

[Rod Corkin]

Certainly the greatest opening movement at least. 

The finale is apparently too difficult for the stupid academy boys to direct. And the singers can't sing it either for the most part. Maybe in 100 years. But I'd be most interested to know what you would say is the best 'closing movement'?

[George]

The finale is apparently too difficult for the stupid academy boys to direct. And the singers can't sing it either for the most part. Maybe in 100 years. But I'd be most interested to know what you would say is the best 'closing movement'?

Could you first explain what you mean about the singers? We were discussing the SQs. 

[Haffner]

Could you first explain what you mean about the singers? We were discussing the SQs. 

I was thrown on that one as well...

[knight66]

With his symphonic music Beethoven's 'message' was always more accessible and universal relative to his chamber music. This was a deliberate strategy as far as I am concerned, it couldn't have been any other way. You can't be so experimental with a public piece like a symphony, so the goals seeked through composing a symphony are somewhat different to a quartet like Op132. But there are things you can get from the ninth that you can't get from a quartet. For what it's worth in such a forum of elevated souls such as this, Beethoven thought Op131 was his greatest.  0:)

Did Beethoven explicitly nail the idea he could not be as experimental with the symphony as he could be in chamber music?

Surely it depends what the composer wants to experiment with. I don't accept the premise that composers 'can't' be as experimental in the symphony. Mahler's 8th was experimental. Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony was experimental. Neither would have been able to compress what you hear in those two symphonies into chamber pieces and preserve those forms or textures, sonorities or layers of sound. It is certainly more risky and expensive for composers to experiment with a full scale symphony; but wrong to suggest it cannot, or has not, been done.

It also may depend on whether a composer as been commissioned and the terms of the commission.

I am not sure that is it sustainable even to claim that chamber music is more personal. (I know that point was not actually discussed.) Tempting, but really it might be more intimate rather; and while some composers pour themselves more personally into a work for small forces, others did not....again, it depends on the needs of the artist to express what they need to, when they need to.

Mike

[M forever]

Wow that's the first time I've read that here.

Yes, but it doesn't mean much because Mr Haffner is always nice to everybody (even me!!!). I guess that makes him a good person but it doesn't change the fact that you are still an egghead who is talking about stuf he doesn't have the slightest clue about.

[BachQ]

Philistines will never dull Beethoven
By Michael Henderson
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT Feb 09, 2008



Something remarkable is going on at the Royal Festival Hall, where Daniel Barenboim, the master pianist, has reached the halfway point of his cycle of the Beethoven sonatas: 16 gone, 16 to go. The journey resumes tonight, and the fact that tickets for all eight concerts have gone won't stop people trying to grab a return.

A journey it is, in the truest musical sense of "always travelling, never arriving". Barenboim, who is 66 this year, has played these sonatas for almost half a century, and never tires of them, for the same reason that his listeners cannot tire of them. Beethoven is the most challenging of composers, and possibly the most protean spirit in the history of human endeavour. To tire of his music is to renounce life itself.

It diminishes Barenboim to call him merely a pianist. He is also a celebrated conductor in the concert hall and opera house, and an educator of world renown who has brought together young Israelis and Palestinians in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a project he established nine years ago with the late Edward Said, that has done so much to build bridges. Last month, uniquely for an Israeli, he was granted Palestinian citizenship.

So it is Danny the man, as well as Barenboim the artist, that music lovers are responding to in these concerts. Sir Neville Cardus wrote of the young Barenboim, the schoolboy who made such an impression on Furtwängler, that he was "probably the most gifted musician of his years since Busoni", and those gifts, the fruits of abundance, have ripened with the decades.

With these Beethoven recitals, therefore, we are honouring one of the most extraordinary men of our time for a life's devotion to music, and very moving it is, too. British audiences do not offer many standing ovations, a detachment that does them credit, yet each night during this cycle the house has risen as one. The performance of the Appassionata on Wednesday, when Barenboim was almost reckless in his execution of the final presto, prompted a spontaneous roar that could have been heard on the other side of the Thames. These are events we shall remember for a lifetime.

***

Audiences at the Festival Hall are currently bathed in a celestial light, the light of Beethoven, mediated through the head, heart and fingers of a great musician. With joy and gratitude, we resume the journey
tonight.

[Rod Corkin]

Did Beethoven explicitly nail the idea he could not be as experimental with the symphony as he could be in chamber music?

Surely it depends what the composer wants to experiment with. I don't accept the premise that composers 'can't' be as experimental in the symphony. Mahler's 8th was experimental. Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony was experimental. Neither would have been able to compress what you hear in those two symphonies into chamber pieces and preserve those forms or textures, sonorities or layers of sound. It is certainly more risky and expensive for composers to experiment with a full scale symphony; but wrong to suggest it cannot, or has not, been done.

It also may depend on whether a composer as been commissioned and the terms of the commission.

I am not sure that is it sustainable even to claim that chamber music is more personal. (I know that point was not actually discussed.) Tempting, but really it might be more intimate rather; and while some composers pour themselves more personally into a work for small forces, others did not....again, it depends on the needs of the artist to express what they need to, when they need to.

Mike

Well of course compared to other symphonic composers of the time even Beethoven's symphonies were quite radical in some respects. We all know that nincompoop CMvWeber cited the 7th as evidence of Beethoven's entry ticket to the mad-house. And the choral finale of the 9th is seen as a step too far by many even today. So it is a relative position. I would simply say Beethoven allowed himself certain 'liberties' with chamber music that he didn't with the symphony, because chamber music is a more flexible media. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I take the symphonic 'liberties' taken by the Romantics as good evidence that Beethoven was correct, he was and remains the benchmark for symphonic music.  0:)

[knight66]

Fine, thanks....we are not far apart over the issue then.

Mike

[BachQ]

Release Date: 07/26/2007
Label:  Deutsche Grammophon   Catalog #: 463626   Spars Code: n/a 
Performer:  Irmgard Seefried,  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,  Ernst Haefliger,  Maureen Forrester
Conductor:  Ferenc Fricsay
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra,  St. Hedwig's Cathedral Choir



This ...remains among the best [LvB Ninths] ever recorded. *** Perhaps what governs this performance more than any other single quality is rhythm: a wholly natural, impulsive, life-affirming forward momentum that makes the first two movements breathtakingly exciting, endows the very slow (18 minutes) Adagio with an unforgettably timeless grace, and caries the choral finale forward on an irresistible wave of increasing joyousness. A fine quartet of soloists, enthusiastic chorus, gorgeously expansive recorded sound (superbly remastered), and wonderful playing by the Berlin Philharmonic (by no means a consistently exceptional ensemble in 1958), set the seal on a performance that should never have been permitted to leave the active catalog. Thank God it's back. Terrific Egmont Overture too. Enjoy while you can!

[Ephemerid]

I tend to prefer the quartets to the symphonies as well-- not that the symphonies are not good!  But there's something going on in those late quartets that I think goes far beyond the symphonies-- and far beyond "classicism" or "romanticism."

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

From Wall Street Journal
One of the leading figures of this school of thought, Susan McClary, found in the opening movement of Beethoven's masterpiece the "murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release" (in her article "Getting Down Off the Beanstalk"; she subsequently toned down the language for a reprint in a published collection, but the sentiments remained the same). In the last century, thinkers like Max Weber and Theodore Adorno, who set out this sociological approach to musical analysis, quickly reached an intellectual dead end.

I don't think this gentleman has ever read either Max Weber or Th.W. Adorno. Adorno saw history and society impinging in a very profound way on musical processes. But he was never so crass and vulgar as to equate Beethoven's dynamism with rape. His mind was too subtle for that.

[BachQ]

From NEW YORK TIMES



February 14, 2008
Music Review
Why, Beethoven, You've Gone Mahlerian
By BERNARD HOLLAND


Gustav Mahler's orchestral transcription of Beethoven's Opus 95 String Quartet suggests that inside every thin man is a fat one trying to get out. Such urges for physical change are usually practical ones; artistic advantage tends to be accidental.

Mahler, as conductor of a big orchestra, wanted the opportunity to have an admired chamber piece for himself. The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which has been making this particular quartet and its enlargement a classroom preoccupation, sent its Curtis Symphony Orchestra to Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night to show what it has been learning. The added attraction was having Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic's music-director-to-be, as conductor.

Although the notes stay the same, avoirdupois has a major effect on most music. The results can be instructive, sometimes helpful and sometimes not. For rehearsal purposes Stravinsky reduced his "Sacre du Printemps" for two pianists, draining away its color and heft but providing a clarifying X-ray view. Dvorak orchestrated his piano four-hand "Slavonic Dances" and did it well.

The art of transcription's biggest success story might be Haydn's "Seven Last Words of Christ." Using the common marketing strategy of the day, Haydn reduced his orchestra original to a string quartet, providing manageable and salable home entertainment for amateur players. The intimacy discovered may be more compelling than in either the orchestral version or the choral adaptation he also made.

As played by the dazzling young Curtis musicians, Beethoven-Mahler had the disadvantage of sounding too beautiful. Different string sections resonated and echoed with unintended grandness. Given the exceptional ability of the ensemble (all strings for this piece) to articulate busy detail, this was still powerful Beethoven but of a different sort. Missing was the grit of a single instrument on a part, the sweat emanating from four players hard at work. This is tough, wiry music. Overeating does it no good.

Beethoven's jarring harmonic subtleties and changes of pace survived. A superior conductor's knowledge of balance and emphasis, and his skill at conveying that knowledge, made the difference. Mr. Gilbert does not cut a glamorous, charismatic figure, but I hope the Philharmonic will buy into his music making.




Felder Completes Composer Trilogy with 'Beethoven' at Geffen
Back to the Article
by BWW News Desk

On the heels of the acclaimed productions of George Gershwin Alone and Monsieur Chopin, the Geffen Playhouse announces the highly anticipated culmination of Hershey Felder's Composer Trilogy, Beethoven, As I Knew Him, to kick off the theater's 2008-09 season.  In Beethoven, As I Knew Him, award winning performer Hershey Felder brings the character of Ludwig van Beethoven to life through the eyes of Beethoven's last surviving friend, as well as through the eternal sounds of the maestro's greatest musical works. Based on a true story, Beethoven, As I Knew Him completes Hershey Felder's musical trilogy entitled The Composer Sonata.

Felder, now world-famous for his lauded portrayals of George Gershwin, Fryderyk Chopin and Beethoven, returns to the Geffen after his nearly sold-out run of George Gershwin Alone and Monsieur Chopin last summer.  The productions received twelve LA Ovation Award nominations and won four awards, including Best Musical and Best Lead Actor in a Musical.  The Geffen Playhouse also welcomes back award winning director Joel Zwick (My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

Beethoven, As I Knew Him features music by Beethoven with text by Felder. The creative team includes Francois-Pierre Couture (sets), Richard Norwood (lighting), Erik Carstensen (sound).

[BachQ]

From NEW YORK TIMES



February 12, 2008
What's in a Beethoven Quartet? A Full Curriculum
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
PHILADELPHIA — It is Distillate of Beethoven: 21 minutes of sharply compressed music that shows him in all his violent, tragic, angry, plaintive, contemplative guises. For four months it has haunted the halls of the Curtis Institute of Music, the elite conservatory here.

In an unusual educational experiment Curtis has established Beethoven's String Quartet No. 11 in F minor (Op. 95) as the touchstone of the academic year for its 160 students. Imagine a year of medical school revolving around the liver, or a car repair course centered on the Chrysler LeBaron.

A highlight of the Opus 95 Project, as it is called, is a performance of Mahler's orchestral transcription of the quartet by the Curtis Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday evening. Alan Gilbert, a Curtis alumnus who is to become music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2009, will conduct. The program also includes Nielsen's Symphony No. 3 and Barber's "School for Scandal" Overture.

Back in the wood-paneled rooms of Curtis, a cozy hothouse of talent with oil paintings, creaky stairs and free tuition, Opus 95 is everywhere you look.

Each violinist, violist and cellist has worked on the piece in a quartet with coaches; literature courses cover the Beethoven letters that mention it; the music history survey course required of first-year students will devote classes to it this week; the advanced music theory course picked apart its structure.

Bruce Adolphe, the composer and lecturer, gave a talk analyzing the work as a musical example of Tourette's syndrome. Top string players performed Opus 95 for the public in December.

The attention devoted to the piece contrasts with what Beethoven himself wrote in a letter: that it was "written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public." In this case make it a large circle of connoisseurs.

"It's turned out to be an incredible educational experience for the kids," said Roberto Díaz, the president of Curtis. "There's a common thread running through everything that they're thinking about. They're learning about how the world that this piece was created in affected the creation of the piece."

The germ of the idea came from Mr. Díaz, a former principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra who is in his second year at Curtis. One of his favorite recordings, he said, is a Leonard Bernstein performance of two late Beethoven quartets with the Vienna Philharmonic. The program notes mentioned that Bernstein had the string players prepare by playing the chamber music version, Mr. Díaz said.

"One day I was listening to this recording, and I thought this would be so incredible for the kids at school to be able to do something like this," he said. He approached Mr. Gilbert, who was scheduled to conduct the Curtis orchestra this year, with the idea. Mr. Gilbert suggested the Mahler transcription of Opus 95, a work he had met as a violinist with a string orchestra in younger days. Mr. Díaz took him up on it.

Written in 1810, the work is considered a culmination of Beethoven's second period and looks forward to the late quartets "in its dominant qualities of conciseness, directness and instant confrontation of contrast," the musicologist Joseph Kerman wrote in "The Beethoven Quartets."

It is called the "Quartetto Serioso," a rare instance in which Beethoven himself bestowed a subtitle. "The F minor Quartet is not a pretty piece, but it is terribly strong — and perhaps rather terrible," Mr. Kerman wrote. "Everything unessential falls victim, leaving a residue of extreme concentration, in dangerously high tension. But strength, not strain, is the commanding impression."

The key, F minor, is that of the "Appassionata" Piano Sonata, the storm scene in the Sixth Symphony and the "Egmont" Overture, Lewis Lockwood points out in his biography "Beethoven."

At Curtis one day last week, the work was on view at different angles. In the morning in Jeanne Minahan McGinn's language and literature class, Benjamin Beilman, a violinist, delivered an oral report on the quartet. "Obviously this is very typical of Beethoven," he said. "He switches character very, very rapidly." Mr. Beilman heard Beethoven's frustration at growing deaf in the quartet's angry moments. He suggested that the mood swings of the piece supported a theory that Beethoven was bipolar.

In the afternoon Mr. Gilbert led a coaching session on the quartet for the principals of the orchestra string sections: Sylvia Kim, the concertmistress; Quan Yuan, the principal second violinist; Philip Kramp, the principal violist; and Abraham Feder, the principal cellist.

Mr. Gilbert drilled them on the gesture needed to start the piece, on the lengths of notes ending phrases, on rhythmic inflections of the opening bars. The opening is "explosive, defiant, like 'me against the world,' " he said.

"It sounds a little uptight the way you're playing it," he added.

The second movement opens with a lone descending cello scale. Mr. Gilbert told Mr. Feder to "feel that delicious twinge of pain."

Several hours later Mr. Gilbert was in front of the string orchestra, rehearsing the large-scale version, which Mahler transcribed with few changes. The contrast was fascinating: from the terse, internal dialogue of the quartet to the lush and powerful communal expression of the orchestra version. Mr. Gilbert struggled to have the orchestra react quickly to his gestures, to infuse their lines with character.

In an interview later he compared the quartet version to a sports car and the orchestra version to a truck. "But I would like the orchestra to function like a sports car," he said. In both versions of the piece, he said he wanted the players to have a "highly developed point of view about the music."

Mr. Díaz said the "jury is still out" on the ultimate success of the project but suggested that the idea might be repeated with other works.

Not all the students were thrilled with the Opus 95 Project. Several said they did not have much to do with it: wind players, not surprisingly.

"The idea of a schoolwide, one-piece project is really cool," said Matthew McDonald, a bassoonist. "I just think we could have been more involved directly."

The project also took a little gentle ribbing. At the Curtis holiday party, where the students traditionally put on humorous skits, Mr. McDonald and a fellow student wrote a number about a contrabassoonist struggling through an audition.

The music? Opus 95.

[MishaK]

From NEW YORK TIMES

...

February 14, 2008
Music Review
Why, Beethoven, You've Gone Mahlerian
By BERNARD HOLLAND

I never cease to be amazed how much time and space Holland wastes criticizing music for what it isn't trying to be.

[M forever]

What do you mean by that?

[BachQ]

From Reuters

Beethoven's Music hits right note for stroke patients
Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:21pm EST
By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - A little Beethoven is good for the brain, according to a Finnish study published on Wednesday showing that music helps people recover more quickly from strokes. And patients who listened to a few hours of music each day soon after a stroke also improved their verbal memory and were in a better mood compared to patients who did not listen to music or used audio books, the researchers said.
Music therapy has long been used in a range of treatments but the study published in the journal Brain is the first to show the effect in people, they added. "These findings demonstrate for the first time that music listening during the early post-stroke stage can enhance cognitive recovery and prevent negative mood," the researchers wrote. Strokes, which occur when blood flow to the brain is blocked, can kill brain tissue and are one of the worldwide leading causes of death and permanent disability. Treatments include blood thinning drugs and attempts to lower cholesterol.

The study involved 60 people who recently had a stroke of the middle cerebral artery in the left or right side of the brain. This is the most common stroke and can affect motor control, speech and a range of other cognitive functions.

One group listened to their favorite music every day or used audio books while another did not listen to any music. All volunteers received standard rehabilitation treatment.
Three months after stroke music listeners showed a 60 percent better improvement in verbal memory compared to an 18 percent benefit for those using audio books and 29 percent for people who did not listen to either.

The ability to focus attention also improved by 17 percent in music listeners, said Teppo Sarkamo, a psychologist at the Cognitive Brain Research Unit at the University of Helsinki, who led the study.
"We can't say what is happening in the brain but based on previous research and theory it may be music listening could actually activate the brain areas that are recovering," he said in a telephone interview.
Music might also in some way activate more general mechanisms that repair and renew the brain's neural networks after stroke, Sarkamo said.

Larger studies are needed to better understand exactly what is going on but these findings show that music may offer a cheap, easy additional treatment for stroke patients, he said.
"This could be considered a pilot study," Sarkamo said. "It is a promising start.

[BachQ]

Barenboim's Beethoven Will Resound for Decades: Norman Lebrecht

Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- There were 3,000 of us who stood and cheered, and three days later we are still trying to understand. Veterans concurred that nothing of its kind had been heard in London since the heyday of Horowitz and Rubinstein.

Daniel Barenboim's concerts were no three-day wonder, no three-week wonder even. They will be remembered for decades. The editor of the Guardian newspaper today described the result as ``beyond perfection.''

After the final chord of Beethoven's 32nd piano sonata at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday, there followed 15 long seconds of complete silence before the audience leapt to their feet in ovation and the most riveting event of this musical century was declared closed.

In eight recitals over a span of three weeks, Barenboim had been playing the Beethoven sonatas in London as a single coherent entity and with intensity that has commanded attention outside the world of classical music. Barenboim, probably the only classical musician alive who can speak with moral authority on the great issues of the day, understands Beethoven as a composer of hope -- a man who perceives the world and its problems to be, with good will, surmountable.

This would have been reason enough for London to flock to his pulpit, given the leading role he has taken in promoting cultural and political dialogue in the Middle East. ``The Artist as Leader'' was how the series was marketed -- not that it needed any marketing. About 650 people bought tickets to the entire cycle, many of them on the day booking opened. Politicians of every color and leaders of media and industry were conspicuous in the audience.

Extreme Intimacy

Around 150 extra seats were crammed onto the stage, within three feet of the piano. This extreme intimacy added an extra dimension to Barenboim's concentration. From the opening notes, the hall shrunk to the size of a domestic living room.

There was additionally a sense that this event was unique and unrepeatable. Barenboim had declined a radio relay, explaining to one BBC panjandrum that London critics had not always treated him kindly in the past. In a cycle of this magnitude, played from memory, there were bound to be wrong notes -- indeed, there were. Nevertheless, the critical reception was, from the outset, overwhelmed by the Olympian ambition of the enterprise.

Barenboim, 65, first played the cycle in public as a teenager in Tel Aviv and has recorded it twice. But this was neither an athletic feat nor a commercial gift set performed for the sake of comprehensiveness. This was an artist at the summit of his powers approaching the music of life with both wisdom and humility.

Troubled Beethoven

Each program contained sonatas from the three periods of Beethoven's troubled life, early, middle and late. Each sonata was invested by Barenboim with a distinctive character.

In the final recital, the 9th sonata (opus 14/1) was marked by introspective restraint, the 4th (opus 7) was playful and exuberant, the 22nd (opus 54) moderately combative and the climactic opus 111 possessed of a visionary wildness that yielded at the end to a surreal calm.

This was beyond question a contemporary reading -- there were modulations in the opus 14/1 that would not have sounded out of place on a Radiohead album. But it was also an interpretation born of an innate understanding of the composer and his mind.

The closing melody of the opus 7 called to mind a hint of Beethoven's ``Choral Fantasia,'' itself a sketch for the Ninth Symphony, reminding us that everything written by this composer was hewn from the same gigantic mountain and with the same elevated message in mind.

Barenboim seemed to be playing, as the phrase goes, ``well within himself'' -- in the dual sense that he did not make large gestures and that he was preoccupied with interior thoughts.

Extreme Exertion

At certain points his exertion was so extreme that he would hold a chord with his right hand, pedaling heavily, while reaching with his left for a handkerchief to mop the sweat.

I cannot ever recall such sustained audience concentration in so large a space. The young man sitting next to me was attending the first piano recital of his life, drawn to the flame by an article he had read. He barely blinked an eye for two hours.

And when it was over, when the rumpled pianist in dark suit and black shirt returned one last time to the stage to greet his communicants on all four sides, he placed the stool beneath the keyboard and gently shut the lid. Will we ever hear its like again?

[MishaK]

What do you mean by that?

I mean that Holland complains that a Mahler transcription of a Beethoven quartet makes it sound bigger and not as intimate. Well, duh! Point is that Mahler was aiming for something entirely different with this transcription, but Holland's ears and mind are to plugged up to hear it.

"Gustav Mahler's orchestral transcription of Beethoven's Opus 95 String Quartet suggests that inside every thin man is a fat one trying to get out."

He's one of the shittiest writers in classical music in the US this side of Hurwitz. 

[BachQ]

Martha Argerich; Live From the Lugano Festival 2007




"[Argerich's] fire is evident in Beethoven's Op 70 No 1, the Ghost trio. But every musician is energised. Mischa Maisky's cello, in the same work, hugs the listener like a friendly bear, though there's plenty of scary tension when needed in the largo's climax. Here and elsewhere, Renaud Capuçon, the violinist, lets the emotions vibrate."






TRACKLISTING

CD 1
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Trio in D major Op. 70 No 1 for piano , violin and cello

«Geister-Trio»

[1] 1. Allegro vivace con brio
[2] 2. Largo assai ed espressivo
[3] 3. Presto

Martha Argerich, pianoforte
Renaud Capuçon, violino
Mischa Maisky, violoncello

Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) / Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
[4] Fantasie für eine Orgelwalze

Martha Argerich, piano
Lilya Zilberstein, piano

Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856)

[5] Andante and Variation for two pianos Op 46

Martha Argerich, piano
Gabriela Montero, piano

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Kinderszenen op. 15

[6] 1. Von fremden Ländern und Menschen
[7] 2. Kuriose Geschichte
[8] 3. Hasche-Mann
[9] 4. Bittendes Kind
[10] 5. Glückes genug
[11] 6. Wichtige Begebenheit
[12] 7. Träumerei
[13] 8. Am Kamin
[14] 9. Ritter vom Steckenpferd
[15] 10. Fast zu ernst
[16] 11. Fürchtenmachen
[17] 12. Kind und Einschlummern
[18] 13. Der Dichter spricht

Martha Argerich, piano



CD2

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)
Quartet in D major, WoO 36, No. 2
for violin, viola, violoncello and piano

[1] 1. Allegro moderato
[2] 2. Andante con moto
[3] 3. Rondo. Allegro

Karin Lechner, piano
Alissa Margulis, violin
Lida Chen, viola
Mark Dobrinsky, cello

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Ma mère l'oye, suite for piano four hands

[4] 1. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormante (Lent)
[5] 2. Petit Poucet (Très modéré)
[6] 3. Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes
(Mouvement de marche)
[7] 4. Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête
(Mouvement de valse modéré)
[8] 5. Le jardin féerique (Lent et grave).

Martha Argerich, piano
Alxander Mogilevsky, piano

Mikhail I. Glinka (1804-1857)
Grand Sextet for piano, two violins, viola, cello and doublebass

[9] 1. Larghetto - Moderato – Allegretto
[10] 2. Andante cantabile
[11] 3. Vivace

Alexander Mogilevsky, piano
Lucy Hall, violin
Alissa Margulis, violin
Nora Romanoff-Schwarzberg, viola
Mark Drobinsky, cello
Enrico Fagone, double bass

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
[12] Thème et variations pour Violon et Piano (1932)

Alissa Margulis, violin
Francesco Piemontese, piano

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No 2
(transcribed for two pianos by Lucien Garban)

[13] 1. Lever du jour (Lent)
[14] 2. Pantomime (Lent – Très lent – Vif – Très lent)
[15] 3. Danse générale (Lent – Animé)

Sergio Tiempo, piano
Karin Lechner, piano



CD 3

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Sonata No 1 Sz 75 for violin and piano
[1] 1. Allegro appassionato
[2] 2. Adagio
[3] 3. Allegro

Renaud Capuçon, violino
Martha Argerich, piano

Ernst von Dohnányi (1877-1960)
Quintet No 1 in C minor for piano, two violins, viola and violoncello, op.1
[4] 1. Allegro
[5] 2. Scherzo
[6] 3. Adagio, quasi Andante
[7] 4. Finale. Allegro animato

Nicholas Angelich, piano
Dora Schwarzberg, violin
Lucy Hall, violin
Nora Romanoff-Schwarzberg, viola
Jorge Bosso, cello

Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994)
[8] Variations on a theme of Paganini
Martha Argerich, piano
Mauricio Vallina, piano
Live recordings: Auditorio Stelio Molo, Lugano, June 2007

[BachQ]

Eroica, Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra / Andrew Manze / Harmonia Mundi




"...taken on its own terms, and with the very enlightening couplings, this well-played, well-engineered SACD multichannel release remains a most attractive option."