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2CD
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D 20023CD
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It is 2020 and the world celebrates Ludwig Van Beethoven's 250th birthday the complete year over. Two CDs with Beethoven's masterworks! Ludwig van Beethoven, born in 1770 and baptized 17th December the same year in Bonn, Germany -- died 26 March 1827 in Vienna, Austria, was composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the classical and romantic eras in classical music, he remains one of the most recognized and influential musicians of this period, and is considered to be one of the greatest composers of all time.
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ARB 119CD
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1999 release. Pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski (1892-1993) was taught by a pupil of Beethoven's assistant Czerny; he is but three steps from the composer himself and his own insight guides him to a high interpretive level. Arbiter traced these performances from archives in Parma, Italy and Philadelphia, presenting them here in their first publication. Horszowski played the entire solo Beethoven piano works as a cycle and kept many sonatas in his repertoire, but few were recorded. Arbiter continues to recover and refurbish his Beethoven legacy.
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ARB 131CD
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2001 release. Pietro Scarpini was a founding modernist in Italy's pianistic traditions, one whose performance of Schönberg's Pierrot Lunaire astonished John Cage. His approach to music is guided by a deep probing intellect, finding a unique stylistic projection. A rare Italian tour by conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler featured Scarpini as the pianist in their legendary collaboration of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4, with the RAI Roma Orchestra. Beethoven's last sonata is also heard, from a previously unpublished radio program.
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NEOS 30802CD
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2008 release. Richard Wagner on Beethoven's "Heroic Symphony": "This is a symphonic poem of enormous significance: it is the third symphony of the great master and the work with which he sets out on an original path for the very first time. In many ways it is quite difficult to understand, despite the associations awakened by the title. And it is this very title, a "heroic symphony", which is not arbitrary, but occasions -- in a certain historical and dramatic sense -- a series of heroical correlations to be presented in musical sound. The term "heroic" must be understood in the broadest possible sense and may in no way be interpreted as pertaining to any military heroes in that sense of the word. Let us perhaps try to understand "hero" as a complete and entire human being, for whom purely human sentience -- of which feelings such as love, pain and potency are but a part -- can only completely and abundantly be made his own when we understand this figure as an artist who can only communicate with us via the medium of music... This is where the heart once again utters thoughts concerning the pain of love: the breast swells full of love -- the breast, which in its delight also embraces pain... ponder on pleasance and balefulness, for they are of the same ilk. Once more the heart tremors, and rich tears of noble humanity brim, but out of this ravishment of wistfulness there emerges an audacious jubilance of strength -- that strength with which love was once wed and that now calls the whole, complete man to applaud his avowal of godliness. Only in the master's musical language could the unspeakable be proclaimed, even if these words can only render such things with timid adumbration." Performed by Ensemble28, Daniel Grossmann (conductor).
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