Claudio Abbado: Beethoven - Symphonies 1-9
by Coles
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DVD details
Actor: Abbado, Beethoven, Berlin PhilharmonicDirector: Coles
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Italian (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Box set, Classical, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 413 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-03-31
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: EUROARTS
DVD Reviews of Claudio Abbado: Beethoven - Symphonies 1-9
DVD Review: Exciting Live Performances
Summary: 4 Stars
This set of all nine Beethoven symphonies provides a great deal of pleasure for a remarkably modest price. The added excitement of witnessing a live performance visually while enjoying the benefit of superb sound is what makes this a special journey through the Beethoven symphonies for me.
Not one of the performances will become my favorite; and given the biases we build up over time, including the fact that we tend to become attached to the first performance of a given work that really moves us, this is not a surprising result, nor one that should particularly dissuade the potential buyer. I do have to register a small amount of disappointment, however, because Abbado is one of my favorite conductors; and I was hoping for a few more revelatory moments than I encountered.
The collaboration of one of the world's best conductors and similarly superlative orchestras has produced performances that are at a very high musical level, containing much beauty and not a little virtuosity. I believe that Abbado has carefully considered and honed every phrase of the music, bringing to bear many years of experience and finely tuned sensibility; in addition, he has updated his interpretations to benefit from corrected editions of the scores and has also incorporated a style that is more in keeping with current performance trends, such as hewing more closely to Beethoven's tempo markings and generally eschewing any Romantic excesses. While all these things give us much to admire and recommend these interpretations as almost definitive, I found them to be just a little too much on the "safe" side to excite me if I remove the visual element. For all their excellence, these are performances that are neither fast nor slow, neither opulent nor austere, neither quirky nor routine, with the result that they fell a little flat with me.
I admit, and in fact insist, that Beethoven symphonies are not a good place for conductors to make highly personal statements--stray too far from a straightforward interpretation, and a conductor risks justified wrath at tampering with the sacred; but once in a while someone adds personal touches that make for a truly great performance for all time, for example Bruno Walter's Columbia Symphony recording of Beethoven's Sixth. It may not be correct, especially in terms of today's sensibilities; but it is unique in the best of ways. Abbado has the temperament and supreme musicianship to bring off a similar feat, and yet in this set I do not see that he has.
The modern avoidance of anything remotely approaching sentimentality in presenting the work of such a classical and architectural composer as Beethoven is probably as it should be, but I cannot wholly buy into it. As a result I found several instances in which opportunities for expression were passed over, especially in the first three movements of the Ninth. Adhering too closely to Beethoven's tempo markings leads to a sense of trivialization and sing-song-y-ness in several other places, too. A bit surprisingly, though, I actually enjoyed the brisker pace taken in the slow movement of the Ninth.
A few very brief impressions of these performances by individual symphony: No. 1, too bouncy; No. 2, not enough humor; No. 3, probably the best of the lot; No. 4, unexceptional; No. 5, really quite exciting; No. 6, not "pastoral" enough; No. 7, possibly tied with No. 3 for best of set; No. 8, not sunny enough; and No. 9, rallies in the end for a rousing last movement, with outstanding contributions from chorus and soloists.
Well-balanced and nicely spread-out audio is further enhanced by the choice of three different mixes: PCM stereo (CD-quality, or better, for the purist and for those lacking a surround-sound setup), and both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround modes. Those, like me, who like a little heavier bass and a more enveloping surround sound, will probably like the DTS the best.
One quibble with the production (and one that does not apply, for obvious reasons, to the other packagings available of this performance of Symphony No. 3, in which it occupies a disc all to itself) is that the pairing of the two longest symphonies, Nos. 3 & 9, on one disc leads to an unfortunate hesitation of play in the last movement of Sym. No. 3 as a layer-switch occurs to accommodate the greater-than-two-hour length of the disc. First, it would have made more sense to have avoided the problem altogether by swapping the Sym. No.3 with Sym. No. 2 so that one of the discs would have had Sym. Nos. 3 & 5 and another would have had Nos. 2 & 9. The current arrangement that has one disc consisting of only Symphonies Nos. 2 & 5 and with no added special feature, while crowding Nos. 3 & 9 onto one disc, just doesn't make sense. The layer-switch burp could also have been avoided by making the switch occur between movements, or even between symphonies; letting the switch occur just wherever layer #1 ran happened to run out of space was careless.
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