Beethoven Complete Piano Sonatas Nos 1-32 Blu-ray - Classical Music Collection for Home Theater & Audiophile Listening

OVERVIEW:Daniel Barenboim memorized the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas when he was only 17 years of age, and has performed them for half a century. During that time he has recorded at least four complete cycles:(1) His first recording for Westminster is excerpted in the 3-LP set "Prodigy and Genius: Barenboim and Beethoven." One copy is currently available on eBay.(2) At the age of 24 he signed a contract with EMI to record his second cycle (1966/69), and it appeared on quality vinyl in a 1970 boxed set, used copies of which can still be found by those who seek to do so. Earlier this year, EMI re-released the cycle on CD, in a significantly better mastering than the previous 1998 CD release.(3) Metropolitan Video produced and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle directed a third cycle in various acoustically excellent and photogenic settings from 1981 to 1984, and DGG released the soundtrack on audio cassette, "digital LP" and CD (the cover photograph shows Barenboim in the same venue as the video). The whole thing appeared in a series of ten PAL laserdiscs in the UK, and two of the sonatas from this series (Appassionata and Waldstein) appeared on Teldec Warner laserdisc in the US and Japan. Now Euroarts is releasing this series in a triple blu-ray set.(4) Barenboim performed a complete cycle in a series of concerts at the Staatsoper in Berlin in June and July of 2005. EMI released the DVD and Decca the CD of these performances. The DVD is accompanied by masterclasses, but the sonatas are a little hard to locate because the concerts did not present them in numerical order.PREVIEW:Barenboim's first two cycles were prodigious, and the last one is impressive, but the third captures him at the peak of his powers. The third one now comes to us in a high-resolution audio and video transfer. Like Euroarts/Metropolitan's release of the eight last Mozart piano concertos, the complete Beethoven sonata cycle promises better sound than ever before, but compromised video quality. I gave five stars to the Mozart because the BD had better sonics than the very fine laserdisc release, and that is likely to be true again in this case. However, I objected to the "masking" of the image, in effect zooming in on the old film stock to fill the 16:9 TV screen. Unfortunately, the producers have done this again, creating jumpy motion for fingers playing on the keys. What is to be done? Use the zoom feature on your player to zoom back out again, creating a black frame all the way around the image. Then the jerky motion disappears.Like the earlier release, there is very generous timing again. Some 724 minutes (twelve hours) of programming which spread out over ten laserdiscs now finds itself inhabiting just three blu-rays. In addition to the sonatas (714 minutes), there is a ten-minute bio called "Portrait eines Musikers" (Portrait of a Musician), which also appeared on the first of the ten laserdiscs.REVIEW:In recent years I have become a fan of the fortepiano recordings of Beethoven's sonatas, particularly the SACD set by Ronald Brautigam on BIS. Barenboim's blu-ray set, recorded on the grand piano, will complement that series nicely on my shelf. I reserve the right to revise or extend my remarks upon further enjoyment of this embarrassment of riches.P.S. (8 December 2012):My copy of the set finally arrived only today. Amazon seems to have run out of copies before the pre-orders were filled. That is a worrying precedent. I was gratified to discover that, although the film has been matted for widescreen TVs, there happens be very little fast-action finger-work on screen. Director Ponnelle lingers over the walls and furnishings a lot, and frequently focuses on Barenboim's face or a general shot of the whole grand piano. Consequently, there is hardly any motion-blurring.