I read somewhere recently that no record company was planning a new Beethoven cycle this side of the year 2000, apart, that is, from Naxos. For that relief, much thanks; though why Naxos are bothering is something of a mystery. If this present disc is part of that cycle Naxos’s more discriminating customers are going to be sadly disappointed. As Beethoven playing and interpretation goes, this is very much vin ordinaire, the kind of thing you can pick up for five francs in a screw-top bottle which tastes – shall we say – acceptable, if the sun is shining, the bread is fresh and the cheese pungent.
Like Frans Bruggen and Jean-Pierre Rampal, Bela Drahos is a flautist-turned-conductor. There is nothing wrong with that, except that Drahos still seems to be in the apprentice stage where Beethoven is concerned. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of repertory which you can learn as you go along. This is head-in-the-score rather than score-in-the-head Beethoven, stylish in places, but bland, too, with enough miscues and miscalculations to confirm Drahos’s tiro status. The orchestra also lacks identifiable personality, despite the fact that there are evidently some good individual players within its ranks.
To take a single point, Drahos seems strangely lacking in the ability to articulate climaxes. Having underplayed the climax in, of all things, the Pastoral Symphony’s storm sequence, he goes on to miss almost entirely the climax of the concluding Shepherd’s Song; after which the coda is allowed to dwindle away with mannered phrasing and an ever slackening pulse.
Naxos appear to have recorded this coupling before. I have not heard the Edlinger/Halasz performances. I hope they are better than the Drahos. Meanwhile, the budget-price Wand and the Norrington take a lot of beating where this coupling is concerned. Both, in their different ways, are first-rate.'