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JONATHAN BISS
Beethoven/5 Vol. 5
JONATHAN BISS concludes his Beethoven/5 commissioning project
with this upcoming final installment, bringing to a close one of the
most ambitious and innovative Beethoven release series of the
21st century.
Jonathan Biss, piano
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Malin Broman, leader
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3
Caroline Shaw: Watermark
Orchid Classics
Release Date: April 24, 2026
Catalogue Number: ORC100433
“Jonathan Biss doesn’t just interpret Beethoven. He interrogates him, which is one of the reasons why his sonata cycle is so engrossing. Having despatched the sonatas, he’s now dealing with the concertos…"
BBC Music Magazine, June 2025
New York, NY: February 9, 2026 --
- Jonathan Biss has established himself as one of the foremost communicators of the repertoire of Ludwig van Beethoven, with a body of work from the past decade that corroborates his deeply personal and meaningful insights on the power and personality of the great composer.
- Launched in 2015 by Jonathan Biss with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Beethoven/5 commissioned five composers to write new piano concertos — five different compositional voices, from different parts of the world and different musical traditions — responding to Beethoven’s five, highlighting the originality and enduring radicalism of works whose familiarity can obscure their revolutionary force.
- Volume 5 of the series pairs Beethoven’s Concerto No.3 in C minor with Caroline Shaw’s Watermark, a reimagination of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto through both direct quotation and subtle reflections of its harmonic language, creating a dialogue between past and present. Shaw “imagines Beethoven imagining it, and in doing so, creates something wholly original.”
JONATHAN BISS ON BEETHOVEN/5 VOL.5
Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto is many things, but foremost, it is a thrillingly taut construction, grabbing the listener by the collar and not letting go. It is the first work to take full advantage of the dramatic potential inherent in the concerto genre, pitting the soloist against the orchestra in often uneasy confrontation. In its slow movement, it becomes something completely different, the tonality transporting us to a faraway place, time suddenly elastic, ferocity giving way to spirituality. The whole piece is a marvel.
It is therefore very exciting to hear a voice as singular as Caroline Shaw’s grapple with Beethoven’s concerto and the process through which it was conceived. Shaw writes that her Watermark is “woven from strands and patches and patterns” of the earlier work. She imagines Beethoven imagining it, and in doing so, creates something wholly original.This album brings to a close the Beethoven/5 project, which has challenged and stimulated me for the past decade. I look forward to spending the rest of my life with the ten remarkable pieces that comprise it.
“If the essence of Jonathan Biss's Beethoven were to be bottled up, it would be the purest spring water: utterly clear, crisp and fresh.”
BBC Music Magazine - Christmas 2024
VIDEO: Jonathan Biss | Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 [LIVE with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2022]
TRACK LIST
Beethoven/5 VOL. 5
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto no. 3 in c minor, Op. 37
1. I Allegro con brio
2. II Largo
3. III Rondo: Allegro — Presto
Caroline Shaw (born 1982)
Watermark
4. I (8:20)
5. II (9:29)
6. III (3:56)
Jonathan Biss, piano
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Malin Broman, leader
Listen HERE: Downloadable Audio & Booklet
or
Download Materials HERE
THE BEETHOVEN/5 COMMISSIONING PROJECT
In 2015 Jonathan Biss launched Beethoven/5, a commissioning project in association with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Over the course of five years, each of the five composers selected by Jonathan wrote a piano concerto in response to one of Beethoven's. Jonathan says:
Beethoven’s music has been an obsession for me for as long as I can remember. Working on it has been a constant source of joy, inspiration, and frustration. Each of Beethoven's five piano concertos is pathbreaking in its own way, and each is gloriously, unmistakably him — full of spirituality, play, and fierce conviction. These pieces are so ubiquitous, though, that it is easy to lose sight of how revolutionary — how vital — they are. One aim of this project is to put that aspect of Beethoven's music front and center.
The project, called Beethoven/5, takes five different compositional voices — from different parts of the world and different musical traditions — and asks each of them to write a work which, in whatever way they see fit, responds to one of the Beethoven piano concerti. The varied and riveting results are a reminder that Beethoven's voice is simply too powerful to be ignored.
No matter what idiom someone writes in, they will have something to say about Beethoven.
More information on the Beethoven/5 commissioning project can be found here.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Extended biographies available here
JONATHAN BISS, piano
Pianist Jonathan Biss is recognized globally for his “impeccable taste and formidable technique” (The New Yorker) and has appeared as a soloist with some of the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Boston Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw, the London Symphony and more. Biss is also the author of Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven, in which he examines music and his own life's journey through the lens of Beethoven's last piano sonatas. He has served as the Co-Artistic Director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival alongside pianist Mitsuko Uchida since 2018.
CAROLINE SHAW, composer
Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Caroline is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.
Recent projects include the score to “Fleishman is in Trouble” (FX/Hulu), vocal work with Rosalía (MOTOMAMI), the score to Josephine Decker’s “The Sky Is Everywhere” (A24/Apple), music for the National Theatre’s production of “The Crucible” (dir. Lyndsey Turner), Justin Peck’s “Partita” with NY City Ballet, the premiere of “Microfictions Vol. 3” for NY Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, a live orchestral score for Wu Tsang’s silent film “Moby Dick” co-composed with Andrew Yee, two albums on Nonesuch (“Evergreen” and “The Blue Hour”), and tours with So Percussion featuring songs from “Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part” (Nonesuch). She has contributed production to albums by Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas.
SWEDISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
More than 100 exceptional musicians make up the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth. The first radio orchestra was founded in 1925, coinciding with Sweden’s first national radio broadcasts.
Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, with 2019 seeing him appointed as the orchestra’s first ever Artistic Director. His extensive tenure will last throughout the 2024/25 season. “It is increasingly rare for the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra not only to last for more than a decade, but to keep growing,” Harding says about working with the orchestra, “it is also rare for an orchestra of the highest musical standard to also very obviously want to keep on growing.”
MALIN BROMAN, leader
The award-winning and versatile performer Malin Broman is equally in demand as a soloist, director, leader and chamber musician. Appointed leader of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2008, she has since been invited to perform as guest leader with the London Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Broman is also devoted to chamber music; she is a founder member of the Kungsbacka Piano Trio and was also a member of the Nash Ensemble for many years.