In a Tuesday (3/31) post on the Los Angeles Times blog Culture Monster, Mark Swed writes, “András Schiff’s cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas at Walt Disney Concert Hall, a two-year project, ends Wednesday night. It ends not in Disney but beyond. Beyond in that these three astonishing final sonatas—best known through their Opus numbers 109, 110 and 111—are transporting music, like nothing written for the piano before and pretty much after. But beyond also, as in cyberspace. NPR has just announced that it will stream the concert live through the facilities of KUSC. … The last volume of Schiff’s Beethoven sonatas, gloriously recorded on ECM and with fascinating booklet notes by the pianist, has recently been released. But the Web offers a host of illuminating extras. Britain’s Guardian newspaper provides on its website free MP3 downloads of the complete series of talks on the sonatas that Schiff gave before his London Beethoven cycle in Wigmore Hall. Here are hours upon hours of insights, equally engrossing to listeners new to Beethoven and those who have known these sonatas for a lifetime.”
Posted April 1, 2009
