CCMusic.com

It would not be an overstatement to declare that Ludwig van Beethoven stands as one of the most significant figures in Western civilisation: a composer who shaped the course of music history through his mastery of rhythm, melody and harmonic exploration, pushing the boundaries of form and effectively bridging the gap between Classicism and Romanticism - and yet all the while continuously professing how difficult he found composition. Detailing his complete output - from his earliest years to his last, by which time he had almost completely lost his hearing - this 85CD box reveals an extensive palette of styles and mediums, rendered all the more obvious by the box's division into different genres (starting with the symphonies and ending with the large corpus of different national folk songs). This box is the 2017 reissue of Brilliant Classics' acclaimed Beethoven Complete Edition, with updates including Beethovenian pianist par excellence Alfred Brendel now in the complete cycle of Piano Concertos, Alessandro Commellato on historic fortepianos in brand new recordings of the 18 sets of 'without opus' piano variations, Emmy Verhey in the Violin Concerto and Romances and a definitive Mass in C from Stuttgart's Gachinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium.