In 2015, pianist Jonathan Biss initiated the Beethoven/5 commissioning project with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and more than fifteen other orchestras, resulting in a groundbreaking collaboration over nine years. The project yielded five extraordinary new piano works by some of today’s most significant composers, responding to Beethoven’s own concerti. The first volume, recorded with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, features Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto and Brett Dean’s companion piece, “Gneixendorfer Musik, A Winter’s Journey”.

Biss observes: “Watching Brett Dean reckon with the Beethoven Fifth Piano Concerto has been exhilarating and also edifying. Gneixendorfer Musik is a raucous and moving essay on Beethoven’s vitality and frailty, and it takes his fifth piano concerto as its point of departure, quoting from it liberally, though always through a distorting lens, and always with Dean’s own distinctive voice at the forefront. It is a work of astounding creativity whose subject is Beethoven’s astounding creativity.”

The Beethoven/5 project deeply engages with Beethoven’s impact, spotlighting his revolutionary and vital contributions, making his music the focal point across diverse traditions and voices.