Penguin Rosettes, Beethoven (composer)

an essential recommendation for any collection. These are performances which seem to present a Beethoven 'for the ages', a distillation of a long interpretative tradition, without concern for... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2012More…

There have never been any doubts about these performances. The horn playing in the Sinfoniaconcertante is unsurpassable and in the quintets Gieseking's lightness and his clarity and sense of... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010More…

…there were times when I genuinely wondered if even five stars wasn't insulting to playing of such glorious playful penetration. …the next minute Pletnev does something that makes you howl... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2007, 3 out of 5 starsMore…

In Carlos Kleiber's hands the first movement of the Fifth is electrifying, yet still has a underlying hushed intensity...In the Seventh the symphonic argument never yields to the charm of the... — Penguin Guide, 2011 editionMore…

it sounds even more spectacular than it did in its vinyl format, vividly catching Beethoven's musical picture of armies clashing. — Penguin Guide, 2011 editionMore…

For anyone lucky enough to have secured a ticket few orchestral concerts have remained so vividly in the memory as the one given by Karajan's incomparable Berlin Philharmonic in London's Royal... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010More…