The year of Beethoven’s 250th birthday is an opportunity to discover, or rediscover, the works of the Bonn-born composer. This album offers a compilation of several works composed between 1802 and 1812, and performed by various artists and ensembles (Leif Segerstam, Béla Drahos, Boris Giltburg, Kodàly Quartet, Maria Kliegel, Nina Tuchman, Takako Nishizaki, Jenõ Jandó and others). Thus, various excerpts from emblematic pieces, both instrumental and vocal, are intertwined, including the third movement of the Pastoral Symphony, characterized by its festive and rural atmosphere, the energetic and solemn last movement of the Fifth Symphony, the Waldstein Sonata, the dark second movement of the Piano Trio No. 5 in D major, Op. 70, No. 1, an excerpt from the oratorio Christus am Ölberge, and the Agnus Dei from the Mass in C major. Taken together, these scattered pieces present a panorama of Beethoven’s personality, at times full of life, at others melancholy, even tormented.
