Beethoven Sonatas - A Survey of Complete Cycles
Part 8, 2010 - 2013
Incl: el Bacha • R.Bouboulidi • R.Buchbinder II • H J Lim • S.Goodyear • F.F.Guy • M.Houstoun • P.Jumppanen • Y.Kikuchi • M.Kodama • M.Korstick • L.Lortie • M.Roscoe • P.Rösel • S.H.Smith
 | Louis Lortie 1991 - 2010 - Chandos Louis Lortie got started in the early nineties on this cycle, with discs released individually, and worked on it until 2000 and then it went nowhere... until, seemingly out of nowhere, Chandos remembered the project late in 2009 and hurried it to an end when it recorded the 8 outstanding Sonatas and published the whole thing in a box. Almost as if they were contractually obliged to give Lortie a happy end, cleaning house before Jean-Efflam Bavouzet got to take a crack at the full Ludwig on the label. The set, which has exemplary liner notes—little essays for each sonata by Bryce Morrison, Beryl Chempin, and William Kinderman, also includes the rarely recorded op.6 Sonata for Four Hands. Availability:
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 | Rita Bouboulidi 2010 - self-published By all appearances a vanity-release by or for the pianist, recorded in Belgium and the US in 2010. Availability:
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 | Michael Korstick 1997 - 2011 - Oehms Michael Korstick, one of the premiere Nicolas Sarkozy impersonators when he’s not busy playing the piano, has been recording on his cycle since 1997 and finished in 2011. The cycle, except for volume 1, which holds the Diabelli Variations, was released on SACDs. The complete set, released late 2012, contains regular, "Red Book", CDs and does not apparently contain the Diabelli Variations. Availability:
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 | Peter Rösel 2008 - 2011 - King Records (Japan) Live recordings from Tokyo's Kioi Hall. Availability (in eight individual volumes, imported):
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 | Rudolf Buchbinder II 2010 - 2011 - RCA Recorded live at the Semperoper in Dresden, 30 years after he recorded his first cycle for Telefunken. It will be followed by a DVD-cycle recorded live at the 2014 Salzburg Festival. Availability:
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    | Yusuke Kikuchi 2010 - 2011 - Triton (SACD) Frankly: all I know is that it exists. And that is consists of four volumes each titled, somewhat bathetic: Monumental, Beethoven Debut, Fantasia, and Ultima. Availability:
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 | H J Lim 2011 - EMI/Warner Impetuous, ambitious, unaware of her naïveté, recorded over two months in the summer of 2011, HJ Lim presents a complete Beethoven sonata cycle, choc full of opinions. Even "complete" is subject to her opinions: She contends that the two Op.49 Sonatas were educational pieces and published against Beethoven’s will, so her set includes only the 30 sonatas she believes are Beethoven’s intended statement in that genre. Then she divides the Sonatas into eight sections, each with its own thematic title: "Assertion of an inflexible personality", "Extremes in collision", "Eternal feminine - Youth", "Nature", "Resignation and action", "Destiny", "Heroic Ideals", and "Eternal feminine - Maturity". Finally the whole cycle was released, with some PR fanfare, for $9.99 on iTunes. Well, one might as well make a splash when recording the complete Beethoven Sonatas at 24, and one might as well be impetuous, ambitious, and perhaps naïve. Beats adding yet another forgettable traversal to the bulging catalog of 78+ such cycles that have come before her. In fact, I kind of want to hear it now. (The late sonatas I did hear on Spotify did not suggest I really do want to hear the whole thing; but she has impressed me in concert, since.) Availability:
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  | François-Frédéric Guy 2009 - 2012 - Zig Zag Territoirs Certainly the design is, to my eyes, of the spectacularly tasteful and clever aesthetic typical for the label. FFG had taken a crack at Beethoven sonatas for the Naïve label in 2006, and finished a Beethoven Piano Concerto cycle with Philippe Jordan. The sonatas were recorded live in concert. Availability:
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 | Steven Herbert Smith 2009 - 2012 - Soundwaves Recording This set of the Beethoven Sonatas, which also includes the nine Variation sets, the Bagatelles op.126, and Rondos op.51, was recorded at faculty recitals at Penn State, between 2009 and 2012. Punters and students give it raving, if meaningless reviews on Amazon. But there's an extensive review by a Beethoven Sonata fanatic on a classical message board here. Availability:
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 | Sebastián Forster 2009 - 2012 - CD Baby Another vanity production, titled "Magnificent Obsession", it promises (on the front cover) to have been "made with passion". I don't know about his Beethoven which, frankly, I have no intention of listening to, but for anyone wanting to learn about hyperbole-in-self-promotion, check this out: "World-wide acclaimed pianist Sebastian Forster ventured into accomplishing a lifetime-legacy major project of immense proportions: the recording of The 32 Complete Piano Sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven, in an ongoing creative effort conceptually started in 2008. This year he completed this project's journey in the form of the production of nine albums, recorded during 2009 until 2012. We present through this "Special Edition" compilation of 8 selected tracks, an introductory release to the Master Works. Born in Buenos Aires in 1975, Sebastian Forster has touched audiences and reached the souls of those lucky to hear him play live, lifting the musical experience to new levels of emotional..." Oy veh! Availability:
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 | Stewart Goodyear 2010 - 2012 - Marquis Classics Young promising Canadian pianist whose liner notes are apparently a joy to read... Cycle recorded in the Glenn Gould Studio, Toronto, on a 1993 Steinway ("Bertha"), which was chosen for GG-Studio by L. Lortie. (For a bit of trivia.) Availability:
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 |  Paavali Jumppanen 2010 - 2012 - Ondine Finish pianist Paavali Jumppanen had been the subject of an early "Dip Your Ears" post, when he recorded - approved if not outright handpicked by Pierre Boulez to do the job - the three Boulez sonatas. ["Dip Your Ears, No.30a (Boulez, Piano Sonatas)"] To find him tackle a complete Beethoven cycle for the wonderful Ondine label (finished in 2012 but released piecemeal in subsequent years) came as a bit of a surprise and soon a joy: Straight-laced in the major sonatas, playflul to quirky in the earlier works (to generalize very roughly), his sonatas in turn delighted, bewildered, impressed - and occasionally made me chuckle. The second volume was among my "Best Recordings of 2015" for Forbes.com. The combination of its qualities makes this one of the ionarts-choice cycles. Availability:
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 | Abdel Rahman El Bacha II 2012 - Mirare In the 80s and early 90s, El Bacha already recorded a complete Beethoven Sonata Cycle (for Forlane). This is his autumnal effort, apparently, with slower tempi throughout and of course for a much nicer label, the French boutique-label Mirare. Availability:
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   | Martin Roscoe 2007 - 2013 - Deux-Elles Recorded between 2007 and 2013, this cycle will contain 9 volumes, the last of which is scheduled to be released in 2019. It will be the first completed (presumably also the first released) complete recording of the Barry Cooper-edited Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music's (ABRSM) edition. It includes all 35 [sic] sonatas - the canonic 32 and the early "Kurfürsten" sonatas WoO47 Nos. 1-3. As per Berry (via NYT): “A complete edition has to be complete, and if you ignore early works, you don’t show the longer trajectory of the composer’s development. There are ideas in the second one that resurface much later in the ‘Pathétique,’ ideas that Beethoven first expressed at the age of 12... They are fully fledged, three-movement works, and if they lack something in quality, you could say the same of some of the Opus 49 Sonatas, and you surely wouldn’t exclude those from the canon.” (Actually, don't be so certain of that: H.J. Lim (see above) thought she knew better and tossed those out, too.) Availability:
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  | Mari Kodama 2003 - 2013 - PentaTone Some seven years ago I first hit upon a new Beethoven Sonata cycle-in-the-making on PentaTone SACDs with Mari Kodama and was very pleasantly surprised by three middle Sonatas, Nos. 16-18. (Dip Your Ears, No. 61 (Mari Kodama's Beethoven)). I've not heard every release since, and of those I've heard not every one blew me away, but this latest and last release to complete the cycle immediately made my ears perk. Madam Nagano's unfussy, rigorously elegant style brings to mind what I had said about the earlier releases then: '[She] employs masculine power towards feminine-sensitive ends – and rather errs on the side of subtlety, if err she ever does... all to great effect.' In Sonata op.101 she reminds me in her nonchalantly un-bothered ways of the nearly-forgotten great, Hans Richter-Haaser. Availability:
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This listing of all Beethoven Sonata Cycles will continue as more sets reach completion or as I find more information about sets already completed.* There are certainly plenty sets under way that should or may reach completion soon: Among them Angela Hewitt (Hyperion), Igor Tchetuev (Caro Mitis), Jonathan Biss (Onyx), Akihiro Sakiya (DPIC Entertainment), Martin Roscoe (Deux-Elles), James Brawn (MSR), Paavali Jumppanen (Ondine) [Completed & Added], Yusuke Kikuchi (Triton) [Completed & Added] et al. I will also add a selection of historically important attempted cycles that were never finished but include
* If you count, as I did, Backhaus II and Arrau II as complete, despite one and two (respectively) missing sonatas. I do not count Walter Gieseking (tapes of 4, 5, 7, 20, 22 for a radio cycle are lost, a studio cycle for EMI was missing seven sonatas when he died), Wilhelm Kempff "0" (Polydor, opp.2/3, 22, 27/1, 28, 31/2, 101 missing).
** Invaluable research on this end done by Todd, resident Beethoven-Sonata expert (and addict) at the Good Music Guide Forum.
The (Great) Incomplete Cycles
Part 1: 1935 - 1966
Part 2: 1967 - 1975
Part 3: 1977 - 1989
Part 4: 1990 - 1996
Part 5: 1996 - 1999
Part 6: 2000 - 2005
Part 7: 2006 - 2009
Ronald Brautigam Special
Part 9: 2014 - 2016
Part 10: 2017 - ____
If you have additional information about recording dates, availability, cover art -- or corrections and additions -- your input is much appreciated.
This survey is meant to list all complete sets of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas and their availability in different markets, not to review them. If you are looking for recent releases, like the Ponelle-filmed cycle of Barenboim's Beethoven Sonatas, or his "Beethoven for All" set, they are included with the sets of which they are actually re-releases.
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5 comments:
The Korstick set on Oehms has been completed and has been released as a set. (The individual SACD releases also remain available.)
Noted & added. Thanks.
Hello, jfl:
I found your survey very useful and lovingly-done ever since I first hit upon it several years ago. I'm a modest collector: all I own up to the moment is Kempff I and II (this one in its lavish DG 200th Beethoven Anniversary Edition presentation - BTW: the cover of this incarnation is missing from your list), Backhaus II, Schnabel (in some crappy Membran 10 Euros rerelease) and Barenboim III (EMI DVD in Berlin).
I was wondering whether you could list historical partial recordings such as Gilel's almost transversal on DG and Kempff's individual recordings from the 20s, rereleased by Dante, I think. Amazon's listing on these individual out of print CDs is a mess, it's really appaling for collectors searching them.
All the best!
Théo, from Brazil
Great site!
A few thoughts and questions:
1. Schnabel and Backhaus I are both available in fantastic transfers from Pristine (www.pristineclassical.com/)
2. I'm 99% sure that Bernard Roberts recorded two cycles for Nimbus: the first direct-to-disk, and the second digitally. I'll check the dates of the former
3. I have a lot of Eduardo del Pueyo recordings for BASF that seem to come from a complete cycle. Any insights?
4. The Malcolm Binns fortepiano recordings are available on CD in Japan
5. I have Kempff 27/1 and 28 from 1941 on Dante. He also recorded 101 acoustically though not in the 1926-1943 period (as far as I know)
6. Paul Badura-Skoda's website suggests that the MHS set dates from the 1950s. Again, any thoughts?
7. Has anyone got ANY details of the Steinberg set? Is it recorded digitally?
Thanks!
Duncan
Thanks Théo & Duncan for the comments.
Yes, Théo, I am planning to add the substantial but incomplete cycles at some point... Gilels and Solomon and Kempff 00 and whatnot. Maybe even Arrau 0 (EMI). But it's a question of time.
Time for a Pollini update, though... prompting me to add a new page now: 2014 - onward.
Duncan: I can find out more re: Paul Badura-Skoda... in fact, I might be in the position to ask him. Still records, the man, and a superb mind and musician.
Will look at Binns through Japan for linking-purposes... and thanks for the Bernard Roberts information.
I am very cautious about Pristine and won't link to them... having (presumably?) paid a hack of a "reviewer" for Fanfare to do shill-reviews has turned me off indefinitely. As has the very idea of adding artificial "ambiance" to old recordings. Perhaps a blind-spot on my part...
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