Orchestral reviews

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Editor’s choice

‘The curve from deathly quiet to

fearfully loud is swift and decisive’

Power to spare:

Paavo Järvi

Subtly and elegantly balanced, the commendable final release in Järvi’s cycle

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Beethoven

Symphony No 9, ‘Choral’, Op 125

Christiane Oelze sop Petra Lang contr Klaus Florian Vogt ten Matthias Goerne bar Deutsche Kammerchor; Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen / Paavo Järvi

RCA Red Seal FÍ 88697 57606-2 (64’ • DDD/DSD)

A worthy climax to Järvi’s Beethoven cycle that goes for shock value

With any good Ninth the prospect of an imminent onslaught should posit itself right from the opening bars, and Järvi’s certainly does

that. The curve from deathly quiet to fearfully loud is swift and decisive, and the die is cast for a dramatic and stylishly shaped performance. There’s power to spare, for example the brawny bite of the strings en route to the explosive central climax (from 5'29" or thereabouts, releasing its full load at 7'28") where the timpani support rather

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BEETHOVEN

than dominate the texture. The Scherzo opens like a clipped call to arms: there’ll be no slacking here, obviously, and the very fast Trio includes some vividly shaped wind crescendos. The Adagio subscribes to current thinking

as to what the Ninth’s slow movement should sound like (or rather, how Beethoven himself might have imagined it to sound), serene and pure in tone with never a hint of the broad pacing and vibrant projection favoured by previous generations. Järvi opts for maximum shock value as he cues the finale to crash in on the tail of the Adagio virtually attacca, which works well except that there’s a marked contrast between the hot-headed brass and timpani combination and the rather camp-sounding, vibrato-free response from the basses. Turn to Osmo Vänskä’s Minnesota recording (BIS, 12/06) and in that particular passage the balance of playing styles strikes me as better judged. The remainder of Järvi’s finale is superb, and excellently sung (especially by Matthias Goerne and the Deutsche Kammerchor), with beautifully traced

counterpoint from the bassoons as the “Ode to Joy” theme builds, a sparky march leading to a chipper fugue and a noble Andante maestoso where the wind accompaniment approximates the sound of an organ. Like Furtwängler many years before him, Järvi whips the closing section into a prestissimo frenzy, having allowed himself some small degree of flexibility earlier on in the symphony. Generally speaking Järvi and his superb

players sound more malleable than Vänskä’s equally energetic Minnesota band, and more in tune with the music’s scale and sense of daring than Dausgaard and his Swedish players (Simax, 10/09). Abbado’s newer Berlin recording (DG, 11/08) provides a more traditional option but I’d say that this is without doubt a worthy climax to a very fine cycle. One or two digressions from the textual norm suggest that, as in previous volumes, the musical text used is the Bärenreiter “New Urtext Edition”.

Rob Cowan

GRAMOPHONE MAY 2010 17

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