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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.
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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.
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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.
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Oehms SACDs
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Individ. | 1-DV, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9, 10, 11 | 1-DV, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9, 10, 11 | 1-DV, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7,
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Peter Rösel
2008 - 2011 - King Records (Japan)
Live recordings from Tokyo's Kioi Hall.
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1, 2,
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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