Beethoven: Symphonies Nos 1-9
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Ludwig van Beethoven
Label: Nimbus
Magazine Review Date: 1/1989
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 349
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: NI5144/8
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 1 |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hanover Band Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Monica Huggett, Conductor |
Symphony No. 2 |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hanover Band Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Monica Huggett, Conductor |
Symphony No. 3, 'Eroica' |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hanover Band Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Roy Goodman, Conductor |
Symphony No. 4 |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hanover Band Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Roy Goodman, Conductor |
Symphony No. 5 |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hanover Band Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Roy Goodman, Conductor |
Symphony No. 6, 'Pastoral' |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hanover Band Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Roy Goodman, Conductor |
Symphony No. 7 |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hanover Band Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Roy Goodman, Conductor |
Symphony No. 8 |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Hanover Band Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Roy Goodman, Conductor |
Symphony No. 9, 'Choral' |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Andrew Murgatroyd, Tenor Eiddwen Harrhy, Soprano Hanover Band Jean Bailey, Mezzo soprano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Michael George, Bass Oslo Cathedral Choir Roy Goodman, Conductor |
Author: Stephen Johnson
The Hanover Band were recording Beethoven symphonies with period instruments some time before the present vogue began; but in those days command of late eighteenth/nineteenth-century performing styles was much more limited, and revelations chiefly concerned qualities of tone and texture: improved balance between orchestral sections, greater clarity in the bass, a closer blend amongst the woodwinds and horns (giving a curious rectitude to the old term harmonie)—and so on.
Now comes a Beethoven cycle for the most part reflecting the latest trends in performance scholarship. There won't be many surprises for those who have followed the explorations of Roger Norrington (EMI) and Christopher Hogwood (L'Oiseau-Lyre), though it's good to see that certain ideas are beginning to consolidate: the tendency to take Beethoven's tempo relations at face value for instance, and valuable restorations like the Scherzo and Trio repeat in the Fifth Symphony (admirably justified by Robert Simpson in his BBC Music Guide,Beethoven's Symphonies). On the other hand, there's this business of observing scherzo repeats after trios. I remember Christopher Hogwood's reasoning—''well it doesn't say don't''—but neither his Academy nor the Hanoverians convince me that it can be made to feel right. In this recording the second movement of the Ninth Symphony is nearly a minute-and-a-half longer than the first—to my ears an unheavenly length.
What impresses me most about these performances is the sheer beauty of the sound. It's partly to do with the quality of the recording (I'm glad to see that record companies are losing the habit of close-miking period instruments), but it has a good deal more to do with the way the players capitalize on the improved relations between instrumental timbres. Now that the trumpets can no longer be expected to dominate tuttis, the trumpeter can let rip without fear of doing damage to an already precarious ensemble similarly the drums, which gain both in clarity and (paradoxically) discretion. But there are gains in all departments, and there's no doubt that this encourages a special, chamber-musiclike-intimacy in the playing, particularly noticeable in passages like the woodwind/strings exchanges near the opening of the Ninth's Adagio. Fuller textures thus acquire extra tension and delicacy, as in the Hanover's rich but effortlessly mobile ''Scene by the Brook''; that, one feels, is how it ought to sound.
But style, as Samuel Wesley once remarked, is the dress of thought, and so far I've discussed only the musical 'clothes'. In the end, all Beethoven performances—authentic or thoroughly modern—compete in the same arena, and while the sense of discovery gives these versions a freshness that puts most of the recent 'big-name' cycles to shame, I have to say I find them rather light-weight especially so when compared with the energetic and ferociously concentrated Norrington. They're far from lifeless, and there are momentary glories—the barking horns in the Trio of the Eroica, or the mellifluous birdin the coda of ''Scene by the Brook''—but too often the Hanover's refinement seems at odds with the spirit of the music. If the Hanover Band 'take fate by the throat' in the Fifth Symphony, they do so gently, and with kid gloves. Or take that magical quiet lead-back in the slow movement of No. 4: I'm impressed by the tone of the clarinet, horn and flute here, but where is that feeling, captured by many more traditional interpretations, that something rather more than a simple return to E flat major is happening? Is such an effect impossible without inauthentic rubato? Then the music cries out for it.
This is a fascinating, thought-provoking set, which as a demonstration of the efficacy of period instruments in Beethoven could hardly be bettered. As 'interpretations' (however anachronistic my use of the word) they leave too much unsaid.'
Now comes a Beethoven cycle for the most part reflecting the latest trends in performance scholarship. There won't be many surprises for those who have followed the explorations of Roger Norrington (EMI) and Christopher Hogwood (L'Oiseau-Lyre), though it's good to see that certain ideas are beginning to consolidate: the tendency to take Beethoven's tempo relations at face value for instance, and valuable restorations like the Scherzo and Trio repeat in the Fifth Symphony (admirably justified by Robert Simpson in his BBC Music Guide,
What impresses me most about these performances is the sheer beauty of the sound. It's partly to do with the quality of the recording (I'm glad to see that record companies are losing the habit of close-miking period instruments), but it has a good deal more to do with the way the players capitalize on the improved relations between instrumental timbres. Now that the trumpets can no longer be expected to dominate tuttis, the trumpeter can let rip without fear of doing damage to an already precarious ensemble similarly the drums, which gain both in clarity and (paradoxically) discretion. But there are gains in all departments, and there's no doubt that this encourages a special, chamber-musiclike-intimacy in the playing, particularly noticeable in passages like the woodwind/strings exchanges near the opening of the Ninth's Adagio. Fuller textures thus acquire extra tension and delicacy, as in the Hanover's rich but effortlessly mobile ''Scene by the Brook''; that, one feels, is how it ought to sound.
But style, as Samuel Wesley once remarked, is the dress of thought, and so far I've discussed only the musical 'clothes'. In the end, all Beethoven performances—authentic or thoroughly modern—compete in the same arena, and while the sense of discovery gives these versions a freshness that puts most of the recent 'big-name' cycles to shame, I have to say I find them rather light-weight especially so when compared with the energetic and ferociously concentrated Norrington. They're far from lifeless, and there are momentary glories—the barking horns in the Trio of the Eroica, or the mellifluous birdin the coda of ''Scene by the Brook''—but too often the Hanover's refinement seems at odds with the spirit of the music. If the Hanover Band 'take fate by the throat' in the Fifth Symphony, they do so gently, and with kid gloves. Or take that magical quiet lead-back in the slow movement of No. 4: I'm impressed by the tone of the clarinet, horn and flute here, but where is that feeling, captured by many more traditional interpretations, that something rather more than a simple return to E flat major is happening? Is such an effect impossible without inauthentic rubato? Then the music cries out for it.
This is a fascinating, thought-provoking set, which as a demonstration of the efficacy of period instruments in Beethoven could hardly be bettered. As 'interpretations' (however anachronistic my use of the word) they leave too much unsaid.'
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