Quote: from the November 1, 2006 Guardian Unlimited Arts Blog:
The lectures given by Andras Schiff on Beethoven's piano sonatas in May [in London's Wigmore Hall] were electrifying - and sold out. Now you can listen to them all here.

The Guardian Unlimited Arts BLog started releasing lecture/recital mp3 files at the beginning of November. The consolidated page where you can get all mp3 files released to date is here. These podcasts are also available via iTunes subscription, or by subscribing to the RSS feed: http://www.guardian.co.uk/podcast/0,,329467939,00.xml

Here's a summary with links to the weekly introduction notes on the Guardian Unlimited Arts Blog pages:

• Week 1 - The Early Sonatas

  (1) Piano Sonata in F minor, opus 2 no. 1
  (2) Piano Sonata in A major, opus 2 no. 2
  (3) Piano Sonata in C major, opus 2 no. 3
  (4) Piano Sonata in E-flat major, opus 7
  

• Week 2 - Trio Sonatas from Op. 10 & Pathetique

  (1) Piano Sonata in C minor, opus 10 no. 1
  (2) Piano Sonata in F major, opus 10 no. 2
  (3) Piano Sonata in D major, opus 10 no. 3
  (4) Piano Sonata in C minor, "Pathétique", opus 13
  

• Week 3 - Five Sonatas

  (1) Piano Sonata in G minor, opus 49 no. 1
  (2) Piano Sonata in G major, opus 49 no. 2
  (3) Piano Sonata in E major, opus 14 no. 1
  (4) Piano Sonata in G major, opus 14 no. 2
  (5) Piano Sonata in B-flat major, opus 22
  

• Week 4 - Working Toward "Pastoral"

  (1) Piano sonata in A-flat major, opus 26
  (2) Piano sonata in E-flat major, opus 27 no. 1
  (3) Piano sonata in C-sharp minor, opus 27 no. 2 ('Moonlight')
  (4) Piano Sonata in in D major, opus 28 ('Pastoral')
  

• Week 5 - "Waldstein"

  (1) Piano sonata in G major, opus 31 no. 1
  (2) Piano sonata in D minor, opus 31 no. 2 ("Tempest")
  (3) Piano sonata in E flat major, opus 31 no. 3
  (4) Piano sonata in C major, opus 53 ("Waldstein")
  

• Week 6 - "Apassionata" and others

  (1) Piano sonata in F major, opus 54
  (2) Piano sonata in F minor, opus 57 ("Apassionata")
  (3) Piano sonata in F sharp major, opus 78
  (4) Piano sonata in G major, opus 79 ("Cuckoo")
  (5) Piano sonata in E flat, opus 81a ("Les Adieux")
  

• Week 7 - "Hammerklavier" and others

  (1) Piano sonata in E minor, opus 90, no. 27
  (2) Piano sonata in A major, opus 101, no. 28
  (3) Piano sonata in B flat major, opus 106 ("Hammerklavier")
  (4) Piano sonata in B flat major, opus 106 ("Hammerklavier") cont'd
  

• Week 8 - The Final Works

  (1) Piano sonata in E major, opus 109
  (2) Piano sonata in A flat major, opus 110
  (3) Piano sonata in C minor, opus 111
  

This is the final listing. Note that the RSS feed and iTunes subscriptions only give you the latest week's releases.

Thank you very much for posting this information. I happened to see it by chance, and passed the details onto my husband who immediately downloaded the whole lecture series and notified several other people as well. He has been really enjoying them, and would never have known they were there had you not troubled to post the details.

Thanks again, very much.

You're very welcome dragonq. I've updated the listings. Your husband might also be interested in the last set of Reith lectures (by Barenboim). These annual podcasts (on different subjects) are only available for download for a week after each performance, but you can listen to streaming versions in the archives. Check the BBC Radio 4 web site next year at the beginning of April for that year's series topic -- it isn't in the regular podcast schedule for the BBC.

Hey moriond ! Thanx a lot for the info. Is this the final schedule?

There should be one more set of lecture-recitals released this week. The full set of these should remain available for at least a week after this at http://guardian.co.uk/schiff (this is the alias they set up to the summary page link in the first post). No telling how long you'll be able to access the files after that.

The Andras Schiff Beethoven Piano Sonata Lecture-Recitals are now complete. Listeners might be interested in reading Alan Rusbridger's article in the Guardian Culture Vulture Blogs on his personal experience listening to Schiff analyze "Waldstein" (subject of two of the final podcasts) last May. Or read the rest of Rubridger's articles on the subject of Schiff's performance of Beethoven's piano sonatas here.

This is the last installment. Get it while you can, since these performances may not be up indefinitely.

The final week of lecture recitals by Andras Schiff covers Beethoven piano sonatas, No. 30, 31, and 32. The initial announcement of releases over the next 7 weeks apparently included the first week's programs. This make more sense, since week seven left us at sonata no. 29. The final release was on December 21st.

Hi. Having trouble downloading the series. Says it's done and get just a blank page. Would appreciate any help.

thanks

Piano Man

If you're using the podcast subscription, you may be experiencing the congestion in the use of the iTunes Store. Sometimes when attempts to retrieve the podcast time out because of the connection load the episodes show up as "done". You can delete the unsuccessfully retrieved episodes and force iTunes to resync with the feed by clicking on the triangle beside the name of the podcast (so that the triangle points right, and you no longer see the list of individual episodes). Then hold down the shift key and click on the triangle again. This will refresh the list of episodes from the feed, and you can try getting individual episodes again.

You should have more success using the http://guardian.co.uk/schiff page and downloading individual mp3 files. (This is also the only way to get the eariler episodes). Check that when you click on an individual sonata, it starts playing. (All of them still seem to work for me). If you are using a PC, you should be able to right click on the link and save the file (on a Mac control-click on a link). Can you check that the file you selected really wasn't downloaded? For example, on a Mac with the Safari browser, the default download location is set in your browser preferences, and you may indeed get a blank web page showing up after you've downloaded the file. However, if you select "Downloads" under your browser Window menu, it will show you the location of the downloaded file, which you can play, add to iTunes, etc.

Which operating system and browser are you using? If you tried to download the first piano sonata mp3 file, can you search (either with Windows Explorer on a PC, or with Finder or Spotlight on a Mac, that a file named "SonataFminorop2no1.mp3" isn't on your system? Please provide specific information about how you are attempting to download files (through iTunes podcasts, and if so, whether it is by subscription updating, selecting "get" under the available episodes on your subscribed podcasts page, or by selecting "get" at the iTunes store page for this podcast; or by going to the mp3 download page and trying to save files.) You should also give details about whether you are using a PC or a Mac, and the browser you are using. Check that the download indeed failed by trying to locate the files on your computer before posting back. If files are present, see whether you can successfully play them when you click on them. You should be able to add these to iTunes by using the File -> Add to Library command once you know the downloaded location. Good luck. Check back with more information if you have problems.

P.S. If your problem is downloading via podcast subscription to the iTunes Store, you can try subscribing directly to the address of the RSS feed by choosing the "Subscribe to podcast" option under the Advanced menu in iTunes, and then inserting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/podcast/0,,329467939,00.xml (copy and paste this address) into the box for the URL and click "OK". iTunes distributes their podcast subscriptions over mirrored servers. Sometimes when server load is high for particular subscriptions, you will not be able to download successfully. You can usually reach the podcast producer's feed even when these mirrored iTunes feeds are congested. While it's convenient to start your subscriptions from the iTunes store podcast listings, it's also sometimes useful to know the original podcast feed source. Hope this helps.

Thanks

Piano Man