Ludwig van Beethoven, András Schiff, Miklós Perényi

On two discs the pianist András Schiff and the cellist Miklós Perényi record everything Beethoven wrote for their two instruments: the five cello sonatas, the three sets of variations and his own cello version of the Horn Sonata Op. 17. The music runs from the young virtuoso of the Op. 5 sonatas to the two sonatas of Op. 102, written on the threshold of the late style. Released by ECM New Series in 2004, the set was widely received as a reference recording of this repertoire.

Schiff and Perényi were both born in Budapest and had played together for years before these sessions. They recorded in December 2001 and August 2002 at the Reitstadel in Neumarkt, with Stephan Schellmann as Tonmeister and Manfred Eicher as executive producer. The booklet carries an essay by the Hungarian writer Péter Esterházy and notes by Martin Meyer. Schiff was then playing the 32 piano sonatas in chronological order, and he compared the two cycles: the cello sonatas, he said, "show in a nutshell the same evolution".

The first disc places the two Op. 5 sonatas beside the twelve variations on a theme from Handel's Judas Maccabaeus and the Op. 17 sonata, a melodious piece that Beethoven himself arranged for cello and that rarely appears in cellists' programmes. The second disc moves from the Mozart variations, on Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen and Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen from Die Zauberflöte, to the A major Sonata Op. 69 and the two Op. 102 sonatas. Schiff called these last works "in a way experimental" yet "fully crystallized", and the D major closes the set with an Allegro fugato.

The album won a MIDEM Classical Award in the chamber music category and the annual prize of the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and was an Editor's Choice in Gramophone. There James Jolly wrote that the two players' experience "shows in every bar" and called it "a masterly survey". In International Record Review, Mortimer H. Frank found it "stylish, virtuosic and utterly free of mannerisms", noting that it is more complete than most other sets because it includes Op. 17 and all three variation sets.

Double CD, ECM New Series 1819/20, first released in September 2004.