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In Reply to: RE: Hey, Zarlino - I finally heard Honeck's Beethoven Ninth posted by Chris from Lafayette on May 03, 2021 at 17:55:23
First of all, I was entertained. Isn't that the idea? I wasn't listening for the conductor's edits as many reviewers are, though I heard them. Perhaps not the Beethoven 9th to have if you're having only one.
The most interesting aspect of this performance to me was taking the symphony at a speed normally taken by the original instrument crowd, and taking that with a full modern orchestra. And, at least to my ears, pulling it off. As I heard it, this amazing orchestra chorus and soloists seemed to handle it easily. Made for a very exciting listen, and though the applause was not heard on the recording I'm going to believe that the crowd went wild over it. While we may differ on what we like as to speed, we can hardly argue with the original metronome markings. Apparently those meant a lot to the composer. for among other reasons he was a friend of whomever invented the device.
But I find the recording quality less than very good and I think Soundmirror is a much overrated audio production company. Their work in Pittsburgh always sounds congested to me, a congestion with a large dynamic range. They cannot compare with Reference's original Keith Johnson. A good part of the difficulty, as I have written earlier, is created by having to record a live performance. Though even in that catagory, they are out-performed IMO by the Boston Symphony Shostakovich cycle and even in Pittsburgh by the Janowski Brahms cycle.
Follow Ups:
Among other companies which excel at recording in-concert performances, I'd add Channel Classics (Dejan Lazic's performance of Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto with Petrenko and the LPO), and RCO Live (especially the newer DXD recordings with Jansons and Gatti).
Getting back to the performance itself, I should add that I have no objection at all to a conductor who tries to live by Beethoven's metronome markings. My trouble with this new Honeck recording is that these tempos do not sound settled in, as far as the orchestra is concerned.
BTW, what did you think of Honeck's dynamic taperings of some of the motives in the first movement?
just so I can comment.
And it's not my favorite work by Beethoven but a guy has to do what a guy has to do.
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