Search - Paavo Jarvi :: Beethoven: Symphony No.9

Oddly Restrained

Lawrence A. Schenbeck | Atlanta, GA USA | 05/05/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"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."

Great new Beethoven's Ninth, and stellar soloists, to boot

Erik Ketzan | Orbis Tertius | 06/30/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"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."

Beethoven's ninth symphony

James W. Galbraith | Sunnyside, Washington USA | 07/02/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"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."