Disc No: GMCD 7334 |
Beethoven’s orchestral music might very well be the most well-known in popular terms of his entire output, and yet his 32 piano sonatas and 17 string quartets have equal claims in terms of such significance, their sheer numbers demanding the attention of musicians and music-lovers in a manner that, as a totality, is often denied the work in similar genres of Haydn, Mozart or Schubert. Such a claim ought not to be considered one that places Beethoven’s orchestral, piano or chamber music on a higher plane than that by those other great masters, but to identify the fact that his music, almost from the time it first appeared, has appealed directly to the musical public without exception and without any perceptible decline in its popularity or the understanding of its consistent quality
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