Old Warhorses Revisited (or... No not another Beethoven cycle!)

Just when you were thinking, thank goodness, no-one seems to be doing yet another Beethoven Symphonies cycle.... another one comes along.

I bought Osmo Vanska's Minnesota Orchestra disc of Beethoven 4 & 5 off ebay last week, got it on Tuesday. Basically, its stonking. Which is the complete opposite of stinking by the way.

Everything I've heard of Vanska on record has been good and this is no exception. I'm not going to go into specifics of why because I'm no music critic but these performances are really alive and spontaneous and you can really get into them. And the sound is superb too (but then I've never heard a less than excellent recording from BIS yet).

 

For interest how many cycles have you collected to date? I have a few No9 including one written for piano alone. Oh and a few Japanese cartoons that seems to use it as the theme music.

 

I don't have many complete cycles... but have heard them courtesy of having worked in a record shop several years ago. I used to have Karajan's 1962 set. I've almost got Norrington's LCP complete. And I've got the complete Zinman Zurich set - which is excellent apart from the Ninth. Apart from that - Kleiber, Abbado, Wand, Marriner, Ashkenazy, Barenboim, McKerras, Chailly and others I have forgotten about have at least 1 or 2 LvB symphonies on our shelves.

I wouldn't normally buy another CD of Beethoven symphonies - got too many already - but this one was cheap on ebay and is a Multichannel SACD too which I quite like.

 

I was advised to get Karajan recordings when I started in this classical thing and I think it is still true by and large. However, it is still good to listen to some old stuff in new ways. How much better are these SACD recordings then?

 

That's a subjective question, and I think pretty dependent on the other kit in use being able to make the most of the differences. If we are just talking 2 channel then the best SACDs seem to communicate a more naturalistic sound and sense of accoustic space and lose the roughness of the trailing and leading edges of normal CD playback - if you see or hear what I mean. But its not night and day different but something you become aware of after 10 mins of listening.

A lot of the best SACDs I have heard are 1950s and 1960s recordings taken straight from the original analog master tapes - e.g Sony releases of CBS stuff and the Living Stereo releases.

Multi Channel SACD... a lot of recordings are gimmicky in their use of the rear channels. But there are many I have heard in my AV system that are really worthwhile, creating a huge 3d soundstage that really draws you into the music - and this is on components that are not near the same grade as my 2 channel system.