RECORDING OF THE MONTH
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1797-1828)
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Choral, Op. 125 (1823) [63:40]
Annemarie Kramer (soprano); Wilke te Brummelstroete (alt); Marcel Reijans
(tenor); Geert Smits (bass); Consensus Vocalis
The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra/Jan Willem de Vriend
rec. 12-14, 18 July 2011, Muziekcentrum Enschede, The Netherlands
CHALLENGE CLASSICS SACD CC72533 [63:40]
I, your faithful reviewer, promising to be sound in mind and body, reasonably
sober etc etc blah blah, do hereby declare that man this is good!
The booklet notes for this release conclude “No, we are never finished
with Beethoven!”, and this recording proves the point in many ways.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is both enigmatic and transparent.
We’re always told it is a flawed masterpiece, but perhaps never really
stopped to wonder how or why. In any case, we love it despite, perhaps even
because of its hairy warts. Love or hate Jan Willem de Vriend’s performance,
one of the things he is not afraid of doing is revealing every moment of this
piece with sharp and spot-lit scrutiny. This is a long way from the opulent
and shimmering aura created around the work by conductors like Herbert von
Karajan. It is by no means a ‘chamber’ reading, but De Vriend
handles The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra like a string quartet, and the
resulting power is up close and personal: he holds up each moment like the
yet beating heart of an Aztec sacrificial victim, and the result is that we
can gain even more new insights into this remarkable creation.
It has no doubt been pointed out before, but this performance lays it out
more barely than most, that Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is an
alchemic artistic wonder, somehow created from a long string of musical banalities.
This is part of the way Beethoven works in most of his symphonies of course,
developing themes made up from minimal resources, and then building them into
collectively monumental shapes which follow pretty much all of Henry Moore’s
early rules for sculpture: truth to your materials, avoidance of slavish reproduction
or search for the merely beautiful, achievement of powerful expression through
the contrasts of surging tension, texture, rhythm and spatial sense: all of
that stuff from which we can learn to apply in every form of art.
The booklet notes include the results of discussions with Jan Willem de Vriend,
in which we are reminded that a Welsh steam engine came to use in Vienna at
the same time as the first sketches for the ninth were being made. You can
certainly hear the motoric energy and sense of precipitate speed in the second
movement’s Molto vivace, though I first heard it as more of a
kind of operatic scene out of which it was as likely for a vocal soloist to
emerge as in the finale, this time with myriad members of the choir milling
around behind with purposeful intent. By no means inflexibly machine-like,
this Beethoven certainly does have the surging drive of never-before seen
objects of infernal modern design and untold effects on the human soul. Compared
with John Eliot Gardiner’s recording with the Orchestre Revolutionnaire
et Romantique on the Archiv label, De Vriend is less keen on allowing the
music its moments to breath, favouring unstoppable onward impetus and maintaining
a tensile line of force even where the dynamic falls and holes appear in the
music like an Emmentaler cheese. I prefer the Dutch drums as well, which have
a more usefully dark and less upper-harmonic rich tone to Gardiner’s
French revolutionary. Excellent though this pungent period-instrument performance
is I think this NSO version is even more inspiring.
When was the last time you saw a classical music release advertised on the
side of a bus? I enjoyed the 7th and 8th symphonies
in this complete cycle (see review),
and this fifth volume is a fitting crown to a remarkable cycle, now available
as an attractive box set which I’ve seen more than once promoted on
the side of Dutch trams. Boisterous and energetic it may be, with more rhythmic
punch than a Power Ranger, but the most tender moments are truly gorgeous,
with the poetry of the Adagio molto e cantabile expressed unsentimentally
but with a proportionate relationship to the whole - a subsumed sense of eruption
rather than of flaccid repose, but performed with grace and lyrical sensitivity.
There is that question of vibrato in the strings, and if you are looking for
Berlin Philharmonic warmth then this is one place you won’t find it.
I don’t find this in the least disturbing, but tastes differ.
So, we’re back to going along at fever pitch in the Finale and
it’s wow wow whoop all the way. The only hurdle to be crossed
is where the singing starts, and here is the only point at which I have to
start throwing mild critical barbs. Baritone Geert Smits, instead of entering
into the swift and high-octane spirit of the whole thing, takes the opening
‘O Freunde…’ as a Big Solo, ascending a throne as a veritable
king, rather than rising from amongst the orchestral colleagues as one of
the ‘Freunde’. This rather over-fed recitative continues to sap
the energy and drag in tempo as the Allegro assai takes flight, and
one has the feeling that the onward momentum suffers throughout this whole
section. The parps of the contrabassoon are superb in the Alla Marcia
though, and tenor Marcel Reijans restores a feeling of collective heroism
in the “Froh, froh...” solo, ably supported by the men of the
chorus. 12:35 in and that famous full choral tune enters with superb drive
and energy, cruising triumphantly over the deliberately sought out syncopations
in the drum. Listen too for the way De Vriend brings out the orchestra in
the gaps between the singing - just one of numerous little tricks which keep
everything dynamic and deliciously direct and down to earth. The choir is
perhaps not quite as strong as the orchestra it has to be said, with one or
two ‘flat’ moments such as the Andante maestoso at 13:25,
where the unison men could have sounded a bit more involved. They are also
less at home in the highest notes, but this is pretty extreme choral writing
after all. On the whole things are very good however, and there are no real
‘if only’ places which will return to haunt you on repeated listening.
I’ve deliberately avoided going through the whole thing with the score
and a fine toothcomb - we’d be here all week: the overall effect is
the most important thing, not pointing out little details which you probably
wouldn’t notice if they weren’t picked out and shoved under your
nose.
This is a tremendous and remarkably revealing performance of Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 9, and with the added bonus of SACD surround sound it
is also a genuinely spectacular sonic experience. With all the benefits and
strengths of modern instrument sonority allied with period brass and historical
interpretative learning this is pretty much the state of the art when it comes
to this work, and if you thought you knew it well through the sheen of your
1970s and 1980s favourites then this is a very good place to allow yourself
to be given a healthy kick into some new thinking.
Dominy Clements
Remarkably revealing - how did Beethoven do that?
Masterwork Index: Beethoven 9