Gramophone’s 2020 Artist of the Year, the pianist Igor Levit, marks Beethoven’s 250^th anniversary with a performance of the ‘Ode to Joy’ theme and three variations from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Liszt’s keyboard transcription. The recording, from Sony Classical, is available to stream both as video and audio (see Apple Music link below). Levit’s performance of the piece, used as the European Anthem, as an encore at the First Night of the 2017 BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall was understood as a decidedly pro-European statement and elicited considerable media attention at the time, as it came roughly a year after the UK’s Brexit referendum.

Levit’s Sony Classical set of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas won him Gramophone’s 2020 Instrumental Award, an award capped by his being named our Artist of the Year. (You can still watch the Awards, which end with a magnificent performance of a Beethoven piano sonata movement, recorded live at Wigmore Hall on the day he received his two Gramophone awards from the hall’s Director, John Gilhooly.)

Another Sony Classical artist, Teodor Currentzis – whose recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was one of the six recordings shortlisted for the 2020 Orchestral Award, and whose orchestra, musicAeterna, was a contender for our Orchestra of the Year (presented in association with Apple Music) – has announced the follow-up release of the Seventh Symphony for April 9, 2021.