Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven Symphonies 4 & 5 [Hybrid SACD]
Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vanska
BIS, 2005
The United States has provided several notable Beethoven Symphony cycles that include Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, George Szell with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, and Sir Georg Solti with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All of these sets are time honored and continue to be well thought of.
These performances are characterized by an expansive portrait sound comparable to a large colorful landscape. Performance and recording methods render these symphonies as wall-of-sound, two dimension large canvas scale. Osmo Vanska's inaugural recording with the Minnesota Orchestra on BIS records is no exception to this rule. If anything, Vanska's canvas is super-sized, providing a panoramic view of Beethoven in all his splendor. "Symphony No. 5" (coupled with "Symphony No.4" here) is as robust as it is plush.
Vanska opts for conservative tempi with a broad and deep sonority. The BIS engineering places in entire orchestra in the back, with the instruments using equal ground in the sound window. The percussion is equal to the strings are equal to the brass. Vanska makes no historical performance claims outside of his desire to stay faithful to the original score. As the history of recording has shown, this can mean a lot of things.
Vanska's Fifth (coupled here with the Fourth Symphony) is deliberately and thoughtfully paced. The transition from the third to fourth movements is seamless and powerful, exuding all of the majesty intended by the composer. Such conducting consideration typically leads to a darker, more rich interpretation, one that shines its light from the Romantic side of Wagner rather than the classical side of Haydn. The result is a full-bodied American performance captured in living color by the crack BIS engineers. This is warm surround-sound Beethoven.
Article comments
1 - Jordan Richardson
Nice piece. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing it!
2 - bliffle
"The concert consisted entirely of Beethoven premieres directed by the composer himself. The performance took more than four hours"
This magnificent concert presentation was reproduced a couple years ago by someone (I forget who) and I heard it on the radio, probably NPR.
Sometimes Beethoven is so heart-achingly and incomparably beautiful one wonders that anyone could ignore him. It is almost always interesting to hear new presentations of his major works: they are so full of new interpretive potential.