#22 The Smell of City Built

It's a city that is building itself. In strings, and then in oboes, bassoons, and horns, clean lines are designed. The building rush starts at 0'45'' and the city is built in three minutes. After that, piano makes its entrée, and we see two different layers. It's a new architect who's explaining, showing new ways, and moderating. In the seventh minute, the two layers gets synchronized and new developments are coming.

The first movement tells everything, the whole story. This recording is superbly exhibited; it's a clever, clean, architectural approach. The layers of material and spiritual are fighting, and piano is losing again and again. In fortissimo of the last tutti, it has no chance. It goes down and then up in sixteenths but orchestra is just confirming its position by two chords per bar. Yes, at the very end, piano repeats the C notes, as orchestra does. But it's not a happy reunion–we know it was swallowed by the merciless city.

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Work: Piano concerto No 3, I. Allegro con brio
Recording: Richard Goode, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer

#21 The Smell of Arms Wide Open

Glowing, sensual recording of Beethoven's string quartets. The minuet of Quartet No 4 is especially welcoming. Here we don't play silly games–it says. You're right here where you belong, feel like home.

Do it. Enjoy the sun and the half shades. The end of the movement flies high. Turn your head up to the sky.

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Work: String Quartet No 4, III. Menuetto: Allegretto
Recording: Pavel Haas Quartet

#20 The Smell of Electricity

It's a big fight between reserve and emotion. Calm but under pressure. Will it hold?

Electricity is the result of the fight. Appassionata is a tension, a thrill in piano music.

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Work: Piano Sonata No 23, "Appassionata", II. Andante con moto
Recording: Lang Lang

#19 The Smell of Clarity

Paavo Järvi with The Kammerphilharmonie Bremen has done for Beethoven's symphonies what John Eliot Gardiner did in 1994 with his Orchestre révolutionnaire et romantique. All the pigsty is gone, only music stays.

Bremen's Beethoven Project is a wonderful achievement and the Ninth symphony is its highlight. Clean lines, pure message. A gemstone.

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Work: Symphony No. 9, IV. Presto
Recording: Christine Oetze, Petra Lang, Klaus Florian Vogt, Matthias Goerne, Deutsche Kammerchor, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Paavo Järvi

#18 The Smell of Snivel

It's not my language. Alfred Brendel describes seventh Diabelli variation as sniveling and stamping.

Here we little girl who's wanting to dance but have no idea how, too afraid of the world of and for adults. Will she try again? One more time?

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Work: Diabelli Variations, 7. Up poco più allegro
Recording: Stephen Kovacevich

#17 The Smell of Firmness

This is a very special recording of Coriolan. Smell the force of bows in the first chord, it defines the landscape. Here I am, here I stand, live or dead.

Depending on your mood, you can sense Coriolan music as either fragmentary or concentrated. It's nervous, pushing forward. And then (after 6 minutes), the heroic theme breaks in the middle. The finale brings nothing but emptiness with no salvation.

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Work: Coriolan Overture
Recording: Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, John Eliot Gardiner

#16 The Smell of Recession

It's dancing but not moving: Two steps forward, two steps back, still on the same spot. It's not about the rondo form, you can hear it even in the main theme. It does not really want to move forwards–it makes the first two steps only to make room for coming back.

The recording is 58 years old and I bet you can find better today, more enlightening and swift. But there's something about good old Schneiderhan. Maybe it's the urgency of his playing. Maybe he's not afraid to recede if music asks for it.

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Work: Violin Concerto in D Major, III. Rondo: Allegro
Recording:Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Berliner Philharmoniker, Paul van Kempen