July 02, 2004

Beethoven sonatas online

Posted by Chris

The BBC has made Artur Pizzaro’s complete Beethoven sonatas available online, together with interview, critical notes etc. Fantastic!

Posted on July 2, 2004 02:33 PM UTC
Comments

Call me pedestrian, but I’ve always loved the somber-sweet-then-wild nature of the “Moonlight” sonata. Pizarro really highlights that difference, playing much more slowly in the adagio than other pianists do.

Posted by Terry · July 2, 2004 02:56 PM

Very cool! I’ll have to listen to them soon. I’m particularly fond of the Appasionata and the Farewell sonatas, myself. And that funky one in G major, No. 15 I think, with all the syncopations.

Posted by Scott Spiegelberg · July 2, 2004 03:13 PM

Great, but what a bummer that they’re only making them available in .ram. REAL is such a horribly invasive program, I refuse to put it back on my machine.

Posted by eszter · July 2, 2004 03:41 PM

Great, and especially great that they’re making them available in .ram. Real is one of the few multimedia products that works well with Linux.

(I have spent much time cursing the many radio stations of Abroadia which offer only the unusable Windows meeja blah.)

Posted by des von bladet · July 2, 2004 04:07 PM

The problem is not so much that they’re in real format but that they stream at 21 Kbps, which is awful. The complete Beethoven cycle is available in midi format, for what it’s worth, at

http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Oeuvres/Music_MidiSonates.html

;)

The people who made kazaa lite also made a light version of realplayer but I don’t know if it’s still available.

Posted by Chris Martin · July 2, 2004 04:32 PM

What eszter said.

Posted by bob mcmanus · July 2, 2004 04:34 PM

Alas, I’m in the eszter boat, and won’t let that Real Player travesty invade my machine. I wish large media outlets (BBC, NPR) offered some alternative to this proprietary nightmarae.

Posted by dofp · July 2, 2004 08:32 PM

You don’t need Real player to listen to it.

Real Alternative will also work. Here’s one mirror…

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_players/real_alternative.cfm

nice small program without all the hassles of Real Audio’s own player.

Posted by Matthew McGrattan · July 3, 2004 01:21 AM

Real on OS X isn’t as invasive; Windows users have Real Alt through Media Player Classic.

Posted by nick · July 3, 2004 01:33 AM
Followups

→ Beethoven sonatas online.
Excerpt: Via Crooked Timber: Artur Pizzaro’s complete Beethoven sonatas are available online, together with all sorts of supporting material. This would be a 100% great deal, except that the pieces are up there in RealAudio format. I need to go through somRead more at Stephen Laniel’s Unspecified Bunker

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.