Beethoven: Fantasia, Triple Concerto & Rondo for piano & orchestra

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Fine performances of two of Beethoven's seriously undervalued works. — BBC Music Magazine, August 2009 More…

Release Date: 18th Oct 2004
Catalogue No: 2564606022
Label: Warner Classics
Length: 64 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

November 2004

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Beethoven: Triple Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Cello in C major, Op. 56

Work length36:16

$3.90

$5.10

Clemens Hagen (cello), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Thomas Zehetmair (violin)
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Nikolaus Harnoncourt

I Allegro

Track length18:18

$1.30

$1.70

II Largo

Track length4:38

$1.30

$1.70

III Ronda alla Polacca

Track length13:20

$1.30

$1.70

Beethoven: Rondo for Piano & Orchestra in B flat major, WoO 6

Work length8:35

$1.30

$1.70

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Beethoven: Fantasia for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra in C minor, Op. 80

Work length19:28

$2.60

$3.40

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Arnold Schoenberg Chor, Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Nikolaus Harnoncourt

I Adagio

Track length3:37

$1.30

$1.70

II Finale

Track length15:51

$1.30

$1.70

Reviews
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Reviews

August 2009

Fine performances of two of Beethoven's seriously undervalued works.

2010

Listening to the opening tutti on this joyful new Triple Concerto, you can just picture Nikolaus Harnoncourt cueing his strings, perched slightly forwards, impatiently waiting for that first, pregnant forte. This is a big, affable, blustery Triple, the soloists completing the sound canvas rather than dominating it, a genuine collaborative effort.
So beside the Beethovenian strut to this performance there's poetry too. Yet thoughtfulness never spells timidity; Hagen and Thomas Zehetmair throw caution to the winds near the end of the first movement. The Concerto's Largo is simplicity itself, rather like a song without words, but it's the finale that is likely to raise the most smiles, a rumbustious affair, uninhibited without coursing out of control. Harnoncourt and his team go for the burn, always brilliant but, more importantly, full of character and humour.
The fill-ups (like the Concerto, recorded at concerts in Graz) are hardly less engaging. The little B flat Rondo is bubbly from the start, Aimard and the orchestra maintaining a feeling of chamber collaboration. And then the ChoralFantasia, so often clunky on disc but here aided by Aimard's sense of style – his arpeggios in the long opening solo have so much colour – and by Harnoncourt's relaxed approach to the music that follows, each variation imaginatively tended within a larger framework. The singing is excellent, the sound both warm and realistic. As 'feelgood' Beethoven programmes go, this is about as enjoyable as it gets, though a high level of musical insight further enhances one's pleasure.

Beethoven: Fantasia, Triple Concerto & Rondo for piano & orchestra

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