Classical update III - Beethoven

Here we are into a new year and yes I'm writing a review as I mentioned on our last edition I had  some cds over Christmas and we'd be talking about them.
Beethoven is the second largest composer in order of works I have collected after Mozart and most of the original discs stemmed from around 1989 through 1994 starting initially with a couple of Naxos titles and later on taking in discs on Deutsche Grammophon that had stood the test of time in the Galleria and Privilege series.
I had replaced a few of those in 2010 for newly remastered versions that apart from sounding firmer being slim 2 cd sets, took less space too.
The last entry for Beethoven was in 2011 when we bought a five cd box set of symphonies.
The violin is an instrument I have a liking for and Beethoven wrote quite a bit for it.

I also like the piano so when the two instruments are played as a duo then I'm enraptured and that lead to getting a recording of Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth Violin Sonatas but the sound was lacking something. Yehudi Menuhin is one of the finest violinists of all time and recordings by him certainly are worth seeking out.

It also was the case I longed for a complete set of them and these two double cd sets give me that in performances that are hard to beat and indeed in his piano works many of us feel Wilhelm Kempff just got the right feel showing sensitivity, restraint and even soul in how on recordings such as this whole set, allowing them to speak directly to us.
The nineteen-seventy analogue sound has been carefully mastered so it sounds as fresh as many modern recordings.
Having got these that had been issued in a four cd set in the halycon days of cd in the mid nineteen eighties I feel upgrading and the same time completing this series of recordings makes sense.