Listeners mystified by the suggestion of a "sixth" Beethoven piano concerto in this release by pianist Gianluca Cascioli, with the small orchestra Ensemble Resonanz and conductor Riccardo Minasi, need not be confused; it is Beethoven's transcription of the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, numbered Op. 61a upon publication. This transcription is not terribly often performed simply because the work loses something when not played on the violin, and it is testimony to Beethoven's handling of instruments that in an age when ...
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Listeners mystified by the suggestion of a "sixth" Beethoven piano concerto in this release by pianist Gianluca Cascioli, with the small orchestra Ensemble Resonanz and conductor Riccardo Minasi, need not be confused; it is Beethoven's transcription of the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, numbered Op. 61a upon publication. This transcription is not terribly often performed simply because the work loses something when not played on the violin, and it is testimony to Beethoven's handling of instruments that in an age when transcription was the norm, he made very few of them. The reading here includes some monster cadenzas from the collection of the work's dedicatee, Archduke Rudolf, and these probably offer the best possible reason to listen to it, but this extra piano concerto is not the oddest feature of this release. Instead, it's the reading of the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, which is based on manuscript emendations supposedly made by Beethoven that have recently been decoded. Experts...
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