Symphony 9

The Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall [DVD Video]	Beethoven: The Symphonies	Brahms: Symphonies, Overtures & Violin Concerto This box contains the most highly regarded Brahms Symphonies and the Violin Concerto recorded by the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Christoph von Dohnanyi.	Symphony 5 (Sub Ac3 Dol Dts)	Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 [Hybrid SACD]
Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies	Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C minor; Haydn Variations [Hybrid SACD]	Beethoven: Symphony No. 9	Wien Nach Noten (Vienna in Music)	Schoenberg Violin Concerto Op.36/Sibelius Violin Concerto Op.47 In another original pairing violinist Hilary Hahn brings together the familiar, highly commercial and long-awaited recording of the famous Sibelius Violin Concerto with the rarely performed Violin Concerto by Arnold Schoenberg. Hahn brings out the romantic qualities of Schoenberg...

Ultimately disappointing
Being a Clevelander, I wanted to like this recording. Despite some grumbling in the local press, Welser-Most ("Call me Franz") is a popular figure among local music lovers. But I can't escape a sense of profound disappointment at the quality of this recording, the Cleveland Orchestra's first in several years. Interpretively, this is neutral performance, meaning Welser-Most and the orchestra deliver a faithful rendition of the text, with tempos as indicated and few inflections. The Cleveland Orchestra plays well enough, but the performance as a whole lacks the sharp profile that one expects. Unlike his predecessors, the conductor favors a smoothed over approach to the extent that the opening violin triplets lack clarity and emerge as a kind of fog hovering over a lake. The snag here, and it's a considerable one, is the recorded sound. I did not expect to hear a modern digital recording that is sonically inferior to Szell's 1960s remastered version, but that's what I was faced with here. Severance Hall is a wonderful location for concerts, but as a recording locale, it has always been problematic. Apparently, Deutsche Grammophon's engineers were not able to find an appropriate microphone placement, because the recording is poorly balanced. Violins are nearly inaudible against over-prominent winds. At times, the double-basses and percussion almost overwhelm the orchestra. It's rather like looking at someone's reflection in a funhouse mirror. From what little I can hear of them, the vocal soloists sing well. The chorus, easily audible, is exemplary, both in tone and German pronunciation. With the plethora of exemplary Beethoven 9ths from the likes of Toscanini, Szell, and Dohnanyi, this disc is a non-starter.

Beethoven's 9th by Franz Welser-Most, Cleveland Orchestra
I've hear live performances of this piece performed by Szell/Cleveland, Maazel/Cleveland, and Norrington/LA Phil, as well as recorded performances by Szell/Cleveland, Dohnanyi/Cleveland, and Bernstein. I would rate this performance with the best of them.

A Magnificent Live Recording of the Beethoven 9th Symphony, Courtesy of The Cleveland Orchestra
One of the most recorded symphonies, the Beethoven 9th Symphony, still remains a perennial favorite amongst concertgoers and recording fans alike. Why? In the liner notes of this latest recording from Deutsche Grammophon, Franz Welser-Most, The Cleveland Orchestra's music director, offers some rather profound reasons for its popularity, noting that it is an artistic product of both the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Back in January of this year, he led The Cleveland Orchestra in a magnificent performance at Cleveland's Severance Hall, with featured soloists, soprano Measha Brueggergosman, mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor, tenor Frank Lopardo, and bass Rene Pape. Thanks to Deutsche Grammophon's superb recording excellence, this performance is now recorded for posterity, and ought to rank as among the best recordings of the Beethoven 9th Symphony currently available. It merits consideration alongside both of Claudio Abbado's recordings with the Berliner Philharmoniker (especially his earlier late 1990s recording for Sony) and Bernard Haitink's relatively recent recording with the London Symphony Orchestra. Under Welser-Most's baton, The Cleveland Orchestra sounds wonderful, with a deeply rich warm tone emanating from the strings and winds (Its tone is more reminiscent of the Wiener Philharmoniker or Dresden Staatskapelle than another prominent symphony orchestra from North America.). If I'm not mistaken, Welser-Most has relied upon the relatively new Barenreiter Edition edited version of the score, since his interpretation is quite brisk, and among the fastest I've heard, encompassing approximately 66 minutes in length. As for the soloists, Rene Pape is especially memorable in the final chorus from Schiller's "Ode to Joy" which concludes the symphony's fourth movement; his superb singing alone is worth the purchase price of this CD (I think Pape sounds better here than in the Teldec recording of the same work that he made with Daniel Barenboim and the Berliner Staatskapelle several years ago.).

Worthy Addition to Your Library
On a bitterly cold January weekend, in the golden glow of a sold-out Severance Hall, the world's finest symphonic instrument resumed its relationship with the composer and work for which it is probably best known. I will leave it to others to quibble over interpretation. The live performance was stunning, the CD is beautifully recorded, and its production values make it an excellent choice for high-end audio systems.

A conductor or a metronome?
We all know what the Cleveland Orchestra, Szell or no Szell, is capable of. We admired for years the absolute devotion to intonation, phrasing, precision, and, why not, adventurous progressions in Bruckner, Beethoven, Mahler. Even the occasional "bad" note was welcome. Now we are left with a great orchestra with a great metronome, as the one that often frustrated our piano practice, with insistence that only a 6am alarm clock reproduces. This is Beethoven without a soul, without a story or history.