Beethoven Symphony No. 7

Christian Lindberg is perhaps the first classical trombonist to maintain a successful full-time performing career as a soloist, now considered among the instrument's foremost exponents.

The year 1812 was a busy year for the well-known but deaf composer Ludwig van Beethoven. At last, Beethoven got the chance to meet that other famous German, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but Goethe’s personality proved a disappointed to Beethoven. The composer was carrying on a hectic love life: in 1812 he wrote his famous letter to an anonymous ‘Unsterbliche Geliebte’ (‘Immortal Beloved’). Moreover, he was getting involved in the life of his younger brother, who was infatuated with a housekeeper. Yet despite his activities, Beethoven found the time to compose several new works, among which his Seventh Symphony.

Their recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 is the long-awaited sister-recording to Teodor Currentzis’ and musicAeterna’s Beethoven Symphony No. 5 album. Recorded at the Vienna Konzerthaus in August 2018, both albums are the Russia-based musicians’ seminal contribution to the composer’s 250th anniversary celebrations.

For his first album with Warner Classics, Lahav Shani conducts the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in Symphony No. 7 and plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4: two pieces which come from Beethoven’s so-called “middle period”. The classical harmonic tension contributes to the drive of the music as much as the rhythmic propulsion. This music features a clarity of texture and, above all, a unity between the melodic motive and the accompaniment. Acclaimed for his “instant chemistry” with the orchestra, Lahav Shani is considered the shooting star amongst conductors – as Der Tagesspiegel puts it: “The young maestro is simply sensational”.