Nate DeMaria ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>I am looking for a recording of the complete Beethoven Symphonies.  I would
>appreciate recommendations for a good cycle with emotional playing, an any
>feedback on budget recordings of the symphonies.

One very interesting budget cycle is the Zinman on Arte Nova.  Although on
modern instruments it is - or so it claims, the issue is not as claer cut
as BMG would have us believe - the first complete recoding of the new
Critical Edition edited IIRD by Jonathan Del Mar.

Unfortunately, Zinman also has his players indulge in period decorations
of their solo lines - I think this is most noticable in the Eroica - which
makes it well-nigh impossible to tell whether some differences from the
score we're all familiar with are from the CE or from the orchestra.

The performances are generally in the 'modern' style, i.e.  fleet, lithe
and, for me, a little lightweight, most particuarly in the 9th, which has
the unusual distinction of repeating the last few minutes of the finale
so that we can hear Beethoven's original pause at bar 747.  The disc is
sensibly tracked, so that you can programme a comlete performance of either
'version'.

Zinman is well worth hearing and having, but not as an only Beethoven cycle
- there's far too much in the music for that.

Of recent cycles, Drahos on Naxos is variable, Peter Maag (on Arts ir some
such) is weighty, in the manner of a couple of generations ago and worth
hearing.  I'm still coming to a reasoned assessment of this cycle, which
has a lot going for it.

As indeed, if not more, does Michael Gielen's EMI cycle.  Gielen is an
'intellectual' conductor and, perhaps more relevently, a composer and
has what I think we might reasonably deduce (from recordings of earlier
conductor-composers like Furtwaengler, Klemperer and Weingartner, to pick
3 more or less at random) are a composer's insights into the music.
Gielen, while also swift, is far weightier than Zinman.

One way I might characterise the differences between Gielen and Zinman,
is that the reaction, when pulled up by some unfamiliarity of detail in
Z's cycle, is 'what?' or sometimes 'wow!' (maybe the former relates to
decorations and the latter to B's own, who knows), but when Gielen makes
some unusual point of emphasis or line, I feel 'hmmmmm' or even 'mmmmmmmm!
yes!'

Of HIP cycles, you can read more in my online survey
(http://www.camosun.bc.ca/~dbarker/beethoven.html) but basically I'd put
Bru"ggen at the head, a length ahead of Goodman/Huggett (Hanover band,
Nimbus), with Gardiner, Hogwood and Norrington as also-rans.

Deryk Barker
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