Complete Sonatas and variation for piano and cello

SACD in 5.0 Surround Sound - playable on all compact disc players

"It may seem indulgent for an artist barely in his forties to make another recording of Beethoven's complete cello works just over 13 years after his first attempt. But Pieter Wispelwey amply justifies his retake with a new set that surely ranks among the very finest Beethoven cello cycles ever committed to disc."
- Five Stars BBC Music Mag (June 2005)

"Discrete microphone placement never distorts the ideal balances that the players bring to their music making, but at the same time, particularly in SACD-surround, the performances have a vividness and three-dimensionality that sounds positively uncanny at times. A magnificent achievement on all fronts."
(10/10 Classics Today)

"It is thirteen years since I first recorded the Beethoven sonatas and it seemed there were plenty of reasons to do it again. Although the first recording had been on period instruments most of the Beethoven recitals I did over the last twenty years had been 'modern'. On top of that I very recently had acquired a Guadagnini cello that needed baptising. It also was a good opportunity to celebrate the new partnership with Dejan Lazic´, with whom this music had already been 'tried out' for about seven years."
Pieter Wispelwey

1792 is a magical date in the history of Vienna. In that year, a young and talented artist , only 22 years old, arrived from Bonn: Ludwig van Beethoven. "Perhaps he will be able to fill the tremendous void left here by Mozart's death last year," some people must have thought. But
eyewitness accounts of Beethoven's first performances tell us that he received only mixed reactions from the Viennese audiences. They admired his innovative sonorities and amazing improvisations, but were more shocked than pleased by the unrestrained, even hectoring quality of his compositions. No, most of the Viennese greeted this new music with incomprehension. Too blunt, too unconventional, too wild, too assertive. "It cannot be denied that this gentleman goes his own way. But what a strange and laborious way it is. Not a trace of melody, everything sounds like a struggle. There is a constant seeking after strange modulations, unpleasant combinations, and a heaping-up of difficulties, so that one loses not only all one's patience but any possibility of enjoyment." Beethoven's dry response: "They understand nothing." His time had not yet come.