Beethoven: Symphony No.9 [Hybrid SACD - DSD]

Paavo Jarvi (Artist), Ludwig Van Beethoven (Composer), Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie (Conductor) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Conductor: Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie
• Composer: Ludwig Van Beethoven
• Audio CD (September 29, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Hybrid SACD - DSD
• Label: MBWY
• ASIN: B002JJE0QA
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #41,176 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; I. Allegro ma non troppo e un poco maestoso

2. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; II. Molto vivace

3. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; III. Adagio molto e cantabile

4. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; IV; Presto; Allegro assai

5. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; IV; Presto; Recitativo "O Freunden, nicht diese Töne!" (bar208)

6. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; IV; Allegro assai vivace "Froh, froh, wie seine Sonnen" (bar331)

7. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; IV; Freude, schöner Götterfunken (bar543)

8. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; IV; Andante maestoso "Seid umschlungen Millionen!" (bar 594)

9. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; IV; Allegro energico, sempre ben marcato "Freude, schöner Götterfunken" (bar 654)

10. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; IV; Allegro ma non tanto "Tochter, Tochter aus Elysium!" (bar 763)

11. Symphony No.9 in D Minor, op.125; IV; Poco Allegro, stringendo it tempo, sempre piu Allegro (bar 843)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great new Beethoven's Ninth, and stellar soloists, to boot, June 29, 2010

By 

Erik Ketzan (Germany) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beethoven: Symphony No.9 (Audio CD)

I own many recordings of Beethoven's Ninth, but don't feel eminently qualified to write extensively about the merits and deficiencies of each-- I just don't have the musical knowledge and vocabulary.

That said, I'm an amateur in hopefully the best sense of Beethoven's Ninth and thought I'd share a few thoughts:

If you own more than a couple Beethoven's Ninths, definitely get this one. The best way I can put it is that Järvi's version sounds alternately big and small. The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen is a chamber orchestra, but even with an augmented roster, I believe that the string section and possibly others are smaller than most modern orchestras. This chorus here is also relatively small at only 41 chorus members. So it has a "smaller," less crowded, more intimate sound at times, but since the orchestra is so tight and the recording such high quality, you hear individual instruments more distinctly and they can sound mighty loud when they want to.

The male soloists are a minor revelation. I first heard Matthias Goerne on Hilary Hahn's recent Bach: Violin & Voice, and was greatly impressed. Here, Goerne brings an unprecedented warmth and tenderness to the "O Freunde" solo. He sounds like a lieder singer performing to an intimate audience, in marked contrast to baritones on other recordings who now sound like bellowing oxen in comparison. The tenor, Klaus Florian Vogt, similarly gives an uncommonly deft interpretation of the "Froh, Froh" part. A bit more theatrical than Goerne, Vogt evokes a clever Minnesinger, skipping along to Beethoven's "Turkish march" with folkish charm and humility. I first heard Christiane Oelze on the superb Christian Thielemann Carmina Burana, and although the soprano has fewer moments to shine than the men, she sounds fine here.

There is much more to say about this excellent recording and I hope that some expert reviewers will jump in and start saying it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Oddly Restrained, May 5, 2010

By 

Lawrence A. Schenbeck (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beethoven: Symphony No.9 (Audio CD)

This recording completes the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie's traversal of the Beethoven symphonies under their music director Paavo Jarvi. But whereas the previous issues in the series seemed to me to strike a wonderful balance between freshly considered interpretive detail and venerable tradition (with nods to chamber-music intimacy and historical performance practice), their Ninth just doesn't crackle with the same degree of discovery.

The ensemble is also placed rather more distantly here than in most of the previous recordings. Perhaps the engineers (or the conductor?) overreacted to complaints about the "thumpy" sound of the earlier issues? (I liked their dynamism!) Or perhaps a simple change of recording venues accounts for that.

There are a few fresh touches, but they often seem mannered or arbitrary. Yes, the march in the finale is egregiously brisk for no good reason. The slow movement seems over-smooth and thus somewhat deficient in character / personality / expressive thrust. The first movement doesn't work very hard at creating a narrative. Even the great scherzo doesn't elicit any surprises here -- except this listener's surprise that technical difficulties in the movement cause momentary tempo lags in the old familiar spots. I would have thought the Kammerphilharmonie players, so nimble elsewhere in the Beethoven series, would have consciously worked to overcome that.

Maybe I'm just too picky. Has this music become, finally, too well-known to all of us? Too often trotted out for every festive or solemn occasion to provoke any authentic new responses?

Or is it that the stripped-down approach doesn't work as well here? I went scurrying back to Vanska's recent effort -- Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 [Hybrid SACD]-- and discovered it's not as bare-bones, emotionally, as I thought. Glad I held onto it, and to my old Reiner Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 as well.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Ninth, March 2, 2010

By 

Millard Fullbore (New England) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Beethoven: Symphony No.9 (Audio CD)

The only reason I'm giving this performance just four stars instead of five is the outrageous tempo of the march in movement IV: not even North Korean soldiers could goose-step so fast! I love everything else about it, especially the 5.1 sound.