"I would never have believed that I could be so lazy as I am here. If it is followed by an outburst of industry, something worthwhile may be accomplished." So wrote Beethoven from the Austrian spa ...

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After her rapturously received Chopin recordings for EMI, Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter turns to Beethoven. And, in her grave, minor-key programme of three sonatas, she plays with an unfettered ...

Beethoven thought that his Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas for solo piano were some of the best he ever wrote. History agrees with him: These famous masterpieces have been studied and worshiped by ...

The titles of these sonatas summon up a stormy, blood-and-thunder vision of Beethoven. That isn’t Ingrid Fliter’s way. Her approach is grandly spacious, and full of the subtle pedal effects you ...

Even as he struggled with the onset of deafness, Beethoven took the piano sonata into new realms of expressive power and beauty. Beethoven composed his Moonlight Sonata in 1801, the same year that — A ...

Beethoven's 23rd piano sonata is stormy and intense, so earned the nickname "Appassionata" or "Passionate". Pianist Iain Burnside has been listening to a wide range of recordings, old and new, to pick ...

Which Claudio Arrau do you like best: The young virtuoso? The elder statesman of the recording studio, whose grave, sometimes ponderous persona obliterated his younger self? Or the mature master who ...

Long after most of my grandmother’s memories had faded, she would occasionally sit down at the piano bench, pull a yellowing score from a nearby shelf, and begin to play. Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without ...

Another rewarding way to spend the Christmas break would be to absorb the third and final volume of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s enthralling traversal of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Bavouzet would not have ...