Beethoven: Bagatelles / Piano Concerto Anderszewsk

Piotr Anderszewski made his debut on Virgin Classics in 2001 with Beethoven’s marathon Diabelli Variations; he now returns to Beethoven with a performance of the Opus 126 Bagatelles, contemporary wth the Diabelli Variations and Beethoven’s last compositions for the piano. Arranged as a cycle on a clearly-defined tonal plan, the Bagatelles are, in Beethoven’s words, ‘certainly the best things of this kind that I have written’. Piotr Anderszewski follows them with the Piano Concerto No.1 – in fact Beethoven’s second, but the first to be published, in which he directs the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen from the keyboard. Of his performance of the Concerto No.1 at London’s Barbican Centre in 2003 the Daily Telegraph wrote, ‘Here is an artist who truly recreates the music every time he plays; there’s no sense of routine, nor of large-scale distortion, simply a liking for pointing up detail, shifting emphases and subtly pushing boundaries.’

Price: $19.98