Beethoven: The 9 Symphonies

Schubert composed his first five symphonies while still a teenager, but they represent just one facet of his prodigious fluency. At this time some of his musical ideas bear a family resemblance to certain themes from Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, but already his own musical character is evident. He began his Second Symphony in December 1814 and had finished it by March 24th of the following year. He completed the Fourth Symphony in about three to four weeks during April 1816. We should not read too much into the Fourth Symphonys Tragic appendage, added by Schubert as an afterthought.

Beethoven's nine symphonies were recorded by Herbert von Karajan in 1961-1962 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra — of which he became permanent conductor in 1955 to replace Wilhelm Furtwängler — and released on the DG label in 1963. 1963 October 15, Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic played Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the inaugural concert of the Berlin Philharmonie.

Four symphonies were enough for Robert Schumann to leave his mark. Without allowing himself to be overawed by Beethoven’s shadow, he succeeded from the outset in coining a highly personal idiom, with an astonishing combination of formal rigour and freedom of inspiration.

What makes the new recordings of the Janoska Ensemble so special? Their sensitivity to subcutaneous atmospheres, the ability to transcend conventional articulatory conciseness and, last but not least, the way they deliberately turn a blind eye to genres and styles.

Felix Mendelssohn’s 5 symphonies demonstrate the composer’s extraordinary melodic gift, but also his adventurous spirit. While the First symphony – composed when he was only 15 years old – still reveals the influences of Viennese Classicism, he realized the sound of national landscapes with ground-breaking orchestral effects and harmonies in his Third (Scottish) and Fourth (Italian).

Andris Nelsons has joined forces with the Wiener Philharmoniker to record Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies for Deutsche Grammophon. The release of their new album on 4 October 2019 will mark the start of the Yellow Label’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth next year. The Nelsons Beethoven cycle is presented in a specially commissioned deluxe box featuring the nine works on five CDs and a single Blu-ray Audio disc in TrueHD sound quality.

Ludwig van Beethoven's 'Nine Symphonies' are the core repertoire of virtually every orchestra in the world and the Concertgebouworkest is no exception.

Over a thirteen-year period, Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra embarked on a spiritual journey through the nine symphonies of Beethoven. The resultant cycle of recordings captures the ensemble's liberated and transformative account of these masterworks, approaching each opus with a sense of spontaneity, insight, and joy. In the words of legendary Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford: "Honesty is what we hear: no romantic lushness, no ego, rather a sense of the truth of each piece on its own terms. There is a sense of intimate communication between an orchestra and conductor in service of a vision of the works as individuals and as a whole."

At a time when it seems that the contemporary movement for historically informed practices has won over most performers of Ludwig van Beethoven's nine symphonies, along comes Christian Thielemann to spin the clock back to the mindset of the mid-20th century. Interpreting the symphonies with a conventional, even hidebound, approach that bears no sign of late Classical scholarship (streamlined tempos, smaller orchestras, original instrumentation, or other aspects of the way the music was actually played in the composer's time), Thielemann presents a Beethoven that is rather more in the manner of Wilhelm Furtwängler than of, say, John Eliot Gardiner.