Search - Ludwig van Beethoven, Bernard Haitink, London Symphony Orchestra :: Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 & 5 [Hybrid SACD]

Memorably Swift Interpretations of Beethoven's 5th and 1st S

John Kwok | New York, NY USA | 05/04/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This splendid Hybrid SACD CD contains two of the most memorable performances I have heard of either symphony - live or recorded - which were recorded by the LSO Live recording team during concerts held in late April 2006 at London's Barbican concert hall. They are also two of the swiftest interpretations I've heard of either symphony, but in a coupling I regard as quite unusual, since this CD opens with the titanic 5th symphony. Haitink's latest interpretation of the 5th Symphony is two minutes faster than Abbado's memorable Deutsche Grammophon recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker, and yet this isn't a rushed performance at all, but an intense, richly textured one replete with ample excellent playing from the strings, winds, brass and tympani (Purists may decry the fact that the well known opening notes of the 1st movement sound less like a ponderous declaration of an impending fate, and more like a brisk staccato announcement, but this, I believe, is an approach which Beethoven himself favored, and one presumably indicated by the late Jonathan Del Mar in his Barenreiter Edition score of this symphony.). Regardless, it is an outstanding recording not only for the superb playing by the London Symphony Orchestra, but it sounds like the best-balanced recording I've heard yet of this popular symphony. In Haitink's capable hands, Beethoven's 1st Symphony sounds less like a work firmly entrenched in the Classical milieu so firmly established by Beethoven's artistic mentors Haydn, and especially, Mozart, and more like one which carries the embryonic seeds of musical motifs which would find their full flowering in Beethoven's later symphonies, most notably the 3rd and 5th symphonies. Haitink's interpretation is among the swiftest I can think of, and one worthy of comparison to Abbado's (his Berliner Philharmoniker cycle) and Harnoncourt's revelatory accounts. There is ample warm, vibrant playing from all of the London Symphony Orchestra's sections, in a recording taken from live performances that is sonically better balanced than virtually any I have heard previously of this symphony. I strongly encourage those of you unfamiliar with Haitink's great Beethoven symphony cyle with the London Symphony to think of purchasing this CD and the rest of this set, preferably in its 6 disk hybrid SACD incarnation for optimal sound quality; regardless you'll be amazed with these excellent performances and the elegant sound quality of these recordings.

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