Beethoven Symphony No. 6

Josef Krips conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. This beautiful “nature” symphony receives an exquisite performance at the hands of a noted Beethoven interpreter. The composer’s sounds of nature are reproduced with like naturalness in Everest’s incomparable recording.

Walter recorded the Beethoven symphonies in stereo for Columbia in 1958-59, taping Nos. 2 & 6 in Los Angeles with orchestra of freelance and studio musicians who rose magnificently to the occasion. Walter was in his eighties, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing these works by the throat; there is no mincing around, no effusive lingering over phrases, no ponderous trudging either.

Martha Argerich, one of the great performing musicians of our time, is also a generous mentor and colleague to younger pianists.

For many music lovers, this is the most purely beautiful performance of Beethoven's most purely beautiful symphony ever recorded.

Riccardo Muti, OMRI (Italian: [rikˈkardo ˈmuːti]; born 28 July 1941) is an Italian conductor.

Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He took piano lessons as a boy and attended the Garrison and Boston Latin Schools. At Harvard University, he studied with Walter Piston, Edward Burlingame-Hill, and A. Tillman Merritt, among others. Before graduating in 1939, he made an unofficial conducting debut with his own incidental music to "The Birds," and directed and performed in Marc Blitzstein's "The Cradle Will Rock." Then at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, he studied piano with Isabella Vengerova, conducting with Fritz Reiner, and orchestration with Randall Thompson.

Beethoven’s Sixth evolves as an exploration of an unemphatic harmonic progression that embodies a feeling of calm. Beethoven employs this exploration in charting the broad structure of the symphony’s movements individually, and of the work as a whole.

George Szell brings classical lightness and drive to Beethoven's early symphony, all the while pointing up the composer's daring formal and harmonic inventiveness. In the first-movement introduction Szell achieves authentic-performance-style clarity yet maintains a welcome solidity of orchestral tone (without becoming weighty) before springing zestfully into the allegro proper. Only the finale, although done with much finesse and polish, sounds a bit restrained compared to the quicksilver renditions of Harnoncourt and Gardiner.

La publication quasi encyclopédique que le label français harmonia mundi a entamée pour le double anniversaire de naissance et de mort de Beethoven, entre 2020 et 2027 se révèle déjà passionnante par sa mise en regard d’œuvres contemporaines du début du XIXe siècle. Elle nous offre aussi la démonstration d’un Beethoven en prise directe avec les œuvres et les préoccupations de son temps, hors de l’imagerie romantique du génie solitaire dans sa tour d’ivoire.

Carlo Maria Giulini (1914-2005) was music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1978-1984, beginning upon the departure of Zubin Mehta (mus. dir. 1962-1978) to be the New York Philharmonic's music director.