Customer Reviews

Beethoven: Symphony No.9

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

No doubt most people are in search of the best Beethoven 9th or the best Beethoven 9 symphonies. I have stopped that search simply because most conductors and performers have gone out of their way to give it their best shot. Some listeners like their Beethoven slow so that every note can be relished and appreciated. Some like their Beethoven fast simply because slow is boring and cumbersome. It is my take that almost every performance has something to appreciate.

Norrington, Zinman and Jarvi tend to speed up their performances. The Jarvi 9th, and his other performances of the Beethoven symphonies are fast with plenty of thwack. The recorded sound is great. You can even hear the piccolo at the very end of the fifth symphony through that mass of sound. The chorus in the 9th is superb. I listened to my Cluytens performance of the ninth and truly love it. It's hard not to like the Berlin Philharmonic. But, the fast paced journey by Jarvi is great, too. I have many productions of the nine symphonies- eight in all. I find something to like in each. You will like Jarvi, too. Buy it-and the price is right, too.

I've listened recordings and live performances of 5 or 6 major symphonies/conductors since the 1960's. When I got the Jarvi CD's of #1,#3,#5,#8 with the Bremmen Chamber Orchestra I was impressed by how bright and crisp that all of the small parts and melodies and counterpoint appear that I never heard clearly in any of the large orchestra recordings in the past.

So I couldn't wait to sample the Ninth with a 16 voice chamber chorus. It is the best I've heard in the same style as the other Jarvi readings. The small chorus is sublime...you can hear every syllable of the Ode sung and counter melodies sung among the choral parts that I got little sense of in the cacaphony of large choruses. Simply the best!

Hands up who adores skim milk? It is good for you. It retains all the vitamins and minerals. One can drink it without a care in the world. But does anyone rave on about it incessantly, as if it were the nectar of the gods?

One could liken this recording to such a commodity.

It is superlatively recorded. It is well played. It soberly heeds period practice. The soloists are stylish. Idiosyncracies are few (yes, the fourth movement is a bit fast but still listenable). But for all of its 'skim milk' merits, it is bland as can be.

The first movement - always the barometer in Nines - is seriously devoid of (a) mystery (b) power [the timpanist adds surface tension and that's about it] and (c) terror. One might as well be listening to the famously limpid Marriner Ninth from the early 1980s (Symphony No. 9 " Choral "; the comparison is warranted.

Make no mistake: the Karajan 77 is still the big gorilla in the ring Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5, 6 & 9. Its supremacy to date is unchallenged. Given the weakness of the current competition, it could be there to stay.

Full Fat.

I have 2 complete CD sets of Beethoven symphonies 1-9.

1) The DG recording of Karajan conducting the Berliner Philharmonic on SACD, DSD. The recording quality on all 5 CDs were rated ADD.I have had this set for 2 years. I dont listen to them that much as I am very particular about sound quality. I have a pair of Bowers & Wilkins 803S speakers, powered by the Arcam FMJ range.
The sound clarity of these CDs was mediocre. There was often a lot of background hiss.

2) I just bought the Paavo Jarvi 5 CDs set.These are on the RCA red seal label, SACD & DSD. WOW - sound quality was superb; almost the best I have heard from a classical recording.( I consider my best sound quality classical CDs were 2 recordings by Hilary Hahn - the Bach concertos - SACD on DG and Hilary Hahn plays Bach - Sony Classical ). I thought symphonies no. 5&1 very fast in tempo ( compared to Karajan ), but overall I highly recommend this set to anyone who wants to listen to Beethoven's famous works but also demands sound quality in the process. I have heard much more music from these CDs than the Karajan set. Amazon had very promptly delivered the last CD to me today - symphony no. 9. This CD costs more than the others in the set, but well worth the extra money. There is much more punch and clarity in the sound. The choral is superb.
I am so pleased with this set of CDs - because now I can finally really enjoy Beethoven's symphonies.

Apparently the technical challenge of recording the vocal portions of Beethoven's nineth is formidable. I say that because, of the recordings of the nineth I've heard, atleast one component of the performance, that is, the orchestra, the soloists, or the chorus, sound muffeled and inarticulate. For this recording it's the chorus. Perhaps it's because it's miked from too great a distance since it has an an annoying echoy quality. I think I just made a new word. At any rate if your looking for a definitive copy of the nineth, this ain't it. HOWEVER, the first eight symphonies of the Jarvi collection are FANTASTIC. Check out my reviews if you care to.