Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best lower-priced set there is, 30 Jul 2007
Like Paul Callick I felt, noticing the strangely negative first review here, that I must likewise try to restore a better view of this wonderful set.
I have owned several complete sets of the cycle, from Klemperer to Abbado, and for what it's worth the shimmering Berlin sound would make Abbado still my favourite among more expensive sets. Frankly I ignored Harnoncourt's set when it first appeared, even though the BBC's CD Review said "This astonishing recording shall influence and alter out perception of Beethoven for years to come". Why? Because I had listened to some early Harnoncourt and thought him pedantic. Wrong! How prejudiced we can be.
When a friend eventually played the Fourth for me, my jaw dropped open. The familiar drama and majesty of the great opening Adagio and Allegro were there in force, with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe on pin-point accuracy, drop-dead form. (Mostly non-historic instruments, though the trumpets are natural ones.) But Beethoven, who can so often seem like a cosmic force or a wizard, so dramatic is his vision, was here also speaking to me, in a coherent single, wise but smiling voice. (Almost with a wink, too!)
Harnoncourt's long-term understanding of the rhetoric of music - that it is always somehow a person speaking to us - is in full flood throughout this whole cycle. Everything is singing, and dancing at the same time - the very Austrian qualities so dominant in Haydn and Mozart leading into Beethoven and Schubert. Whether a movement is a fiercely rhythmic one or divinely lyrical, this is the most fully human (still awesomely powerful because of the orchestra's playing, but powerfully human) presentation of Beethoven I have heard. I loved the man even more because of meeting him in the music.
It seems to be no accident that the greatness of these recordings comes in part from the fact that Harnoncourt apparently could only finally bear to come to Beethoven after recording Schubert's symphonies. That young composer's noble, transparent humanity allowed Harnoncourt to read in Beethoven not the music which was so distorted in use by the Nazis in Harnoncourt's own childhood, giving him a self-confessed problem with Beethoven, but the music of the first-ever composer to risk an independent career, and the extraordinary integrity with which he held in one soul his sufferings and anger, his longings, loves and visions, and his profound insight into human life.
So if you want to hear the Beethoven you (thought you) know, go with say Abbado or Zinman - wonderful, informed readings. If you want to meet Beethoven afresh, as if for the first time, and hear his voice, Harnoncourt and the COE have recorded a miracle.
|
|
|
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
amazed, 23 Feb 2007
Reading the review above makes me want to write a review here for the first time. Who knows what that listener wanted...for me, this is simply a most wonderful series, with such clear, bold playing (especially in the unison passages). The dance figures are fresh and alive, and when the whole band gets going, the effect is like a landscape dancing. The detail and clarity of the playing is a marvel. For me, it was a conversion, after years of trying to love these pieces, but hearing them usually played, I guess, with either sententiousness or big-hair over-heightening of the romanticism. A lovely piece of playing which leaves the intelligence of the writing to speak for itself, and doesn't force anything.
|
|
|
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful set, 16 Nov 2008
I have recently returned to listen to all the various accounts that I have of the Beethovens in my collection after being so stimulated by Vanska's astonishing new series. The Harnoncourt set stands out as being as good as - but TOTALLY different to - the Vanska series. I could not be without either.
Harnoncourt plays things relatively straight. He exaggerates nothing - there is no sense of artifice here or of special efforts to recreate the special Beethoven moments anew - but somehow the effect is just as powerful, joyful, exciting, dancing, songful etc as you could wish ... and was, only a few years ago, totally revolutionary too.
I see that Amazon is selling the larger set - with the Harnincourt/Aimard piano concertos (really excellent), the Missa Solemnis (very good) and other works as well as the symphonies - and at an even cheaper price than this set. If that offer is still on when you are reading this then get that set rather than this one. Otherwise this is a great deal, too.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
~ Camille Saint-Saens
~ Ludwig van Beethoven
~ Berliner Philharmoniker
![Works of Igor Stravinsky [Box Set]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41ffzhvDpuL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
~ Donald Gramm
![Beethoven: Symphonies; Concertos; Overtures; Creatures of Prometheus; Missa Solemnis [Box Set]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41wniS-7pXL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home