The Barenboim on Beethoven Live from Berlin sonatas were filmed during a series of eight concerts over a four week period in mid-2005 at the Staatsoper Berlin, where Barenboim serves as General Music Director. They were lavishly shot by the award-winning French filmmaker and documentary director Andy Sommer, whose credits include In Search of Beethoven, concert films with Claudio Abbado and Sir Simon Rattle, opera broadcasts (Tristan & Isolde, Aida), Sur Incises with Pierre Boulez and In the Heart of Music – The 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Reviewing the Berlin concerts, the Berliner Morgenpost journalist Klaus Geitel wrote “what makes Daniel Barenboim’s interpretation unique is the sensitivity and intensity with which he uses the enormous range of these sonatas to paint a picture of the man: Beethoven, alone at the piano, aware of the isolating deafness he cannot escape. Daniel Barenboim deeply inspired, weaves his way in and out of Beethoven’s tragic predicament. He recreates Beethoven’s traumatic progressions as an artist.” Geitel commented in a separate review that, “What Barenboim conveyed to his audience was his determination to be creative, the intensity of his technical achievement and his musical sensuality.” The Beethoven sonatas have been an important part of Daniel Barenboim’s life and repertoire for many years and he continues to perform them, both individually and as a cycle. This is his third recording of the complete sonatas, and his …
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