Music of unbridled joy for #Beethoven250

Beethoven: The Complete Piano Concertos

"The sonatas were pursuits of inner truth, the symphonies pursuits of the highest qualities in humanity, the piano concertos pursuits of unbridled joy." In a heartfelt essay in the liner booklet, Stewart Goodyear notes that he waited to record the Beethoven Piano Concertos: "... it had to be at a time when I felt that I knew deeply what universal joy and delight felt like." This joy and delight is clear to hear in this 3-disc album with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Andrew Constantine, from Orchid Classics.

When we think about joy and Beethoven, it's Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy that comes to mind:

Joy, beautiful spark of Divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Heavenly One, thy sanctuary!

Schiller's poem was published in 1785, and revised in 1808. In between, Beethoven wrote the first four of his piano concertos; the fifth was begun in 1809. Beethoven's own apotheosis of joy came, of course, with the Schiller setting in the last movement of his Ninth Symphony in 1822/24. But I love Stewart Goodyear's characterization of this wonderful music as being in some way essentially joyful. It's the serious, grumpy stereotype of Beethoven himself that Goodyear is fighting here. Unlucky in love, navigating family difficulties, grappling with political disasters that seem as dire as our own today, experiencing the vagaries of the "gig economy" as one of the very first freelance composers, and stricken with deafness in this very period; we can feel for Beethoven today. We can even imagine a black cloud hanging over his head. Especially with the late sonatas and string quartets to come, we look to Beethoven for spiritual and aesthetic resolutions to his own pain and suffering. "The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing",  Walter Benjamin once said. But listen to the music, especially in these performances, and you'll hear incredible verve and passion, as Beethoven reaps the harvest of his own "pursuit of happiness" in his art, if not in his personal life. Perhaps it was the Mozartian model - Beethoven's 3rd Concerto in C minor owes so much to Mozart's C minor Concerto K. 491 - that helped Beethoven get over his own hump on his way to happiness.

These are special performances by this team assembled by Orchid Classics: the assured and stylish playing of the BBC National Orchestra Wales shows that conductor Andrew Constantine and this fine Canadian pianist (why are there so many fine Canadian pianists, by the way?) are on the same page. I look forward to listening to these discs in regular rotation during this Beethoven Year, along with the amazing set from Richard Goode & Ivan Fischer, the equally fine recordings of Mitsuko Uchida & Kurt Sanderling, and, of course, the Wilhelm Kempff & Ferdinand Leitner set which was my first experience of this marvellous music.



This album will be released on March 13, 2020