Franz Schubert, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, András Schiff

Between March 2004 and May 2006 András Schiff played all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in a series of recitals at the Tonhalle Zürich, recorded live for his eight-volume cycle on ECM New Series. Encores After Beethoven collects the encores from those evenings, issued together for the first time. Schiff did not choose them as entertainment but as pieces closely related to the sonatas just heard, and together they make a recital of their own with Schubert, Mozart, Haydn, Bach and Beethoven himself.

The music comes from seven concerts, one encore set for each volume from the first to the seventh. After Op. 111 Schiff allowed only silence, invoking Thomas Mann's reverence for its Arietta, as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported. The recordings keep the applause. Stephan Schellmann was the Tonmeister and Manfred Eicher produced. Schiff's booklet essay, in German and English, explains each choice and the evening it belonged to.

Schubert's Allegretto in C minor D 915, played after Op. 10 and the Pathétique, is in Schiff's words a "sister" of the middle movement of Op. 10 No. 2. The Andante favori WoO 57 was first meant as the slow movement of the "Waldstein", so it followed Op. 53 in December 2005. The disc closes with Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor BWV 867 from the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier, heard after the "Hammerklavier" and its strenuous fugal finale. The first encore of the cycle, Schubert's Allegro assai in E flat minor from the Three Piano Pieces D 946, followed Op. 2 and Op. 7 in March 2004. Schiff hears it as a close relative of the trio in Op. 7. Haydn's two-movement Sonata in G minor, Mozart's Eine kleine Gigue K. 574 and the Menuets and Gigue of Bach's First Partita complete the programme.

Critics took it as more than a set of leftovers. In BBC Music Magazine, Rebecca Franks wrote that "it adds up to a far more satisfying experience" than a series of offcuts suggests. Stephen Plaistow told Gramophone readers: "If you think of encores as lightweight, think again." Michael Dervan gave it four stars in The Irish Times in November 2016, observing that the connections were all planned in advance.

CD edition, ECM New Series 1950, released in November 2016, with about 52 minutes of music.