Beethoven Symphony 9
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Ludwig van Beethoven
Label: Reflexe
Magazine Review Date: 10/1987
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: EL749221-4
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Symphony No. 9, 'Choral' |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
London Classical Players London Schütz Choir Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Patrick Power, Tenor Petteri Salomaa, Bass Roger Norrington, Conductor Sarah Walker, Mezzo soprano Yvonne Kenny, Soprano |
Composer or Director: Ludwig van Beethoven
Label: Reflexe
Magazine Review Date: 10/1987
Media Format: Vinyl
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: EL749221-1
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Symphony No. 9, 'Choral' |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
London Classical Players London Schütz Choir Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Patrick Power, Tenor Petteri Salomaa, Bass Roger Norrington, Conductor Sarah Walker, Mezzo soprano Yvonne Kenny, Soprano |
Composer or Director: Ludwig van Beethoven
Label: Reflexe
Magazine Review Date: 10/1987
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 62
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 749221-2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Symphony No. 9, 'Choral' |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
London Classical Players London Schütz Choir Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Patrick Power, Tenor Petteri Salomaa, Bass Roger Norrington, Conductor Sarah Walker, Mezzo soprano Yvonne Kenny, Soprano |
Author: Richard Osborne
It was an intelligent move to launch this period-instrument Beethoven cycle with a coupling of the comparatively light-weight Second and Eighth Symphonies (EMI EL270563-1; CD CDC7 47698-2, 3/87), a Gramophone Award-winning record as it turned out (see page 562). Equally it is a bold move to record the Ninth so early in the cycle. The Ninth was the centrepiece of Roger Norrington's weekend ''Beethoven Experience'' at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall last February and since the cycle is being recorded, very properly, in conjunction with concert performances (you can hear the Eroica at the QEH on the 28th of this month) the Ninth was recorded shortly after that—by all accounts—compulsively interesting event.
For the Ninth, Norrington has a larger orchestra of some 65 players, with the 50-strong Schutz Choir in the finale. But the sonic mix is very much as it was on the earlier record, with glimmering, vibrato-free strings, plaintive woodwinds, keen-toned and at times strangely keening horns and trumpets, and those wonderful small, hard, sonically explosive drums. As on the earlier record. Norrington takes Beethoven's metronome marks seriously (and writes more fully about them in his accompanying performance note); in the Ninth this leads to some tempos that are slower than usual, though the conducting and playing are generally lean and athletic, unswervingly dramatic, with the same magpie instinct for carrying off a mass of objets trouves from within Beethoven's storehouse of strangely imagined orchestral effects.
Few people will doubt the success of Norrington's treatment of the first two movements of the symphony. His tempo for the first movement is as close to Beethoven's metronome as makes no matter. Beethoven suggests crotchet = 88, Norrington adopts crotchet = 80 with appropriate variants. Toscanini, Walter, Szell, and Wand (EMI) have all taken tempos of equivalent quickness for a larger orchestra but the period instruments, expertly handled by the London Classical Players, give Norrington that extra degree of mobility: a heavily armed gunboat as opposed to a fairly quick battle cruiser. Beethoven's argument and his texturing are brilliantly exposed and the dramatic highpoints are superbly realized, with a fearful timpani contribution in the recapitulation and a beautifully moulded coda where, aptly, the tempo is dropped back somewhat.
The Scherzo, taken at about 120 bars a minute, is also wonderfully exhilarating with the small leather drums and wooden sticks providing that electrifying sound which caused contemporary audiences to applaud in mid-movement. When he reaches the Trio, Norrington takes the metronome (still 116: dotted minim becoming a minim) at face value. Received wisdom is that Beethoven's nephew nodded at this point and falsely copied the Scherzo's 116 where a much quicker tempo is needed; but Norrington argues, and his performance persuasively confirms, that the music goes very well as a serene idyll lazily mirroring the Scherzo's more urgent motions.
As for the slow movement: well, Vaughan Williams, you should be living at this hour! Anyone who has read VW's famous essay on the Ninth will recall that the great man didn't think much of the slow movement. To his ears it was salon music designed to make ''strong men with whiskers brush away a silent tear''. The trouble is, the hymn-like opening and the first bars of the second subject make so deep an impression when played as the Beethovenian equivalent of the ''Nimrod'' variation that conductors and audiences are loathe to hear the music played up to tempo and floated urbanely by them. Norrington takes Beethoven's metronome markings, quick by nineteenth- but not by eighteenth-century standards, literally. The principal themes have an airy gravity and the variations take on an almost skittish character, touched with mordant wit, though the agony of the brass's summoning interventions later on is barely diminished. Beethoven's innate dramatic sense often led him to make his boldest effects swiftly (think of the drums in the Agnus Dei of the Missa solemnis) and this movement, like the 'slow movements of the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, becomes here a rapid and emotionally ambiguous interlude in an altogether larger drama.
If Norrington's account of the slow movement won't be entirely to the taste of strong men with whiskers, nor will parts of the finale. Again, we have one radically slower tempo: the Alla marcia and tenor marching song taken here at Beethoven's dotted crochet = 84. This slower pulse opens up the orchestral textures and, wittingly or not, gives the tenor solo, sympathetically sung here by Patrick Power, a certain note of pathos. The slower march tempo has the twin advantage of matching up more smoothly not only with the big double fugue later on but also with the choral re-entry at bar 213. On the other hand, the orchestral fugato which leads away from the tenor's verse sounds rather limp, which is no doubt why virtuoso conductors of all temperaments have favoured some speeding up of the Alla marcia.
Norrington also plays the string recitatives at the start of the movement in strict time, citing the markingSelon le caractere d'un recitative, mais in tempo. This takes some getting used to; indeed, played like this the recitatives continue to remind me of the gabbled and peremptory utterances of a tiresome maiden aunt. According to Sir George Smart who talked to Thayer in 1861 (Thayer's Life of Beethoven, ed. Forbes—Princeton: 1964, page 963) Beethoven was adamant about the need to play the recitatives in strict time. But to what extent was he overstating a point to pre-empt sentimental slackness? From day one, musicians have argued that it is virtually impossible to keep strict time and convey the character of a sung recitative. As Karajan explains on a famous rehearsal disc for his 1962 Berlin Ninth on DG, the need to keep in time must be tempered by some sense of the recitatives as powerfully articulated, often expressively modulated, personal utterance.
There is a great, and original, drama being played out in these first 90 bars and though Norrington's performance is a brilliant admonition I am not sure that it is, in the end, a more musical solution than Toscanini's or Karajan's. The bass's entry is also dreadfully flustered.
I think we must also grant that the setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy admits of several treatments and the intensity achieved, with slightly larger choirs than the one used here, by conductors like Toscanini, Furtwangler, Klemperer and Karajan. At the end of his essay on the symphony Wagner says: ''I leave it to our baritones trained in the sterling English oratorio tradition to go on forever venting their 'Freude' in two strict crotchets''. The singing of the Schutz Choir is vivid but, perhaps, a bit prim at moments like the climax of the Allegro assai (''Steht vor Gott'', bars 85 ff).
That said, it is not Norrington's aim to give us a transcendental Ninth in the Furtwangler style. This is a Ninth which owes nothing to Wagner but quite a lot to Bach and Haydn. Among conductors using traditional forces, Wand comes closest to Norrington in seeing the Ninth looking, Janus-like, both backwards and forwards from its historical vantage-point in 1824; but there is no doubt that by using period instruments and a smallish choir, all admirably caught on LP by EMI in this lively Abbey Road Studio No. 1 recording, Norrington has given us an account of the Ninth that is both uniquely persuasive and uniquely important.'
For the Ninth, Norrington has a larger orchestra of some 65 players, with the 50-strong Schutz Choir in the finale. But the sonic mix is very much as it was on the earlier record, with glimmering, vibrato-free strings, plaintive woodwinds, keen-toned and at times strangely keening horns and trumpets, and those wonderful small, hard, sonically explosive drums. As on the earlier record. Norrington takes Beethoven's metronome marks seriously (and writes more fully about them in his accompanying performance note); in the Ninth this leads to some tempos that are slower than usual, though the conducting and playing are generally lean and athletic, unswervingly dramatic, with the same magpie instinct for carrying off a mass of objets trouves from within Beethoven's storehouse of strangely imagined orchestral effects.
Few people will doubt the success of Norrington's treatment of the first two movements of the symphony. His tempo for the first movement is as close to Beethoven's metronome as makes no matter. Beethoven suggests crotchet = 88, Norrington adopts crotchet = 80 with appropriate variants. Toscanini, Walter, Szell, and Wand (EMI) have all taken tempos of equivalent quickness for a larger orchestra but the period instruments, expertly handled by the London Classical Players, give Norrington that extra degree of mobility: a heavily armed gunboat as opposed to a fairly quick battle cruiser. Beethoven's argument and his texturing are brilliantly exposed and the dramatic highpoints are superbly realized, with a fearful timpani contribution in the recapitulation and a beautifully moulded coda where, aptly, the tempo is dropped back somewhat.
The Scherzo, taken at about 120 bars a minute, is also wonderfully exhilarating with the small leather drums and wooden sticks providing that electrifying sound which caused contemporary audiences to applaud in mid-movement. When he reaches the Trio, Norrington takes the metronome (still 116: dotted minim becoming a minim) at face value. Received wisdom is that Beethoven's nephew nodded at this point and falsely copied the Scherzo's 116 where a much quicker tempo is needed; but Norrington argues, and his performance persuasively confirms, that the music goes very well as a serene idyll lazily mirroring the Scherzo's more urgent motions.
As for the slow movement: well, Vaughan Williams, you should be living at this hour! Anyone who has read VW's famous essay on the Ninth will recall that the great man didn't think much of the slow movement. To his ears it was salon music designed to make ''strong men with whiskers brush away a silent tear''. The trouble is, the hymn-like opening and the first bars of the second subject make so deep an impression when played as the Beethovenian equivalent of the ''Nimrod'' variation that conductors and audiences are loathe to hear the music played up to tempo and floated urbanely by them. Norrington takes Beethoven's metronome markings, quick by nineteenth- but not by eighteenth-century standards, literally. The principal themes have an airy gravity and the variations take on an almost skittish character, touched with mordant wit, though the agony of the brass's summoning interventions later on is barely diminished. Beethoven's innate dramatic sense often led him to make his boldest effects swiftly (think of the drums in the Agnus Dei of the Missa solemnis) and this movement, like the 'slow movements of the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, becomes here a rapid and emotionally ambiguous interlude in an altogether larger drama.
If Norrington's account of the slow movement won't be entirely to the taste of strong men with whiskers, nor will parts of the finale. Again, we have one radically slower tempo: the Alla marcia and tenor marching song taken here at Beethoven's dotted crochet = 84. This slower pulse opens up the orchestral textures and, wittingly or not, gives the tenor solo, sympathetically sung here by Patrick Power, a certain note of pathos. The slower march tempo has the twin advantage of matching up more smoothly not only with the big double fugue later on but also with the choral re-entry at bar 213. On the other hand, the orchestral fugato which leads away from the tenor's verse sounds rather limp, which is no doubt why virtuoso conductors of all temperaments have favoured some speeding up of the Alla marcia.
Norrington also plays the string recitatives at the start of the movement in strict time, citing the marking
There is a great, and original, drama being played out in these first 90 bars and though Norrington's performance is a brilliant admonition I am not sure that it is, in the end, a more musical solution than Toscanini's or Karajan's. The bass's entry is also dreadfully flustered.
I think we must also grant that the setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy admits of several treatments and the intensity achieved, with slightly larger choirs than the one used here, by conductors like Toscanini, Furtwangler, Klemperer and Karajan. At the end of his essay on the symphony Wagner says: ''I leave it to our baritones trained in the sterling English oratorio tradition to go on forever venting their 'Freude' in two strict crotchets''. The singing of the Schutz Choir is vivid but, perhaps, a bit prim at moments like the climax of the Allegro assai (''Steht vor Gott'', bars 85 ff).
That said, it is not Norrington's aim to give us a transcendental Ninth in the Furtwangler style. This is a Ninth which owes nothing to Wagner but quite a lot to Bach and Haydn. Among conductors using traditional forces, Wand comes closest to Norrington in seeing the Ninth looking, Janus-like, both backwards and forwards from its historical vantage-point in 1824; but there is no doubt that by using period instruments and a smallish choir, all admirably caught on LP by EMI in this lively Abbey Road Studio No. 1 recording, Norrington has given us an account of the Ninth that is both uniquely persuasive and uniquely important.'
Beethoven Symphony 9
Beethoven Symphony 9
Beethoven Symphony 9
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