Beethoven: Symphonies 5 & 7 (Live At Carnegie Hall)

• Beethoven: Symphonies 5 & 7 Live At Carnegie Hall
• Product type: ABIS MUSIC
• Brand: SOLI DEO GLORIA

Review It was revolutionary, it was romantic, it was wonderful. --The Times ***** The Allegretto was sinuous and haunting, the finale joyously visceral. And from fates knock at the onset of the Fifth Symphony, Mr. Gardiner wrought Beethoven fresh and strange, with gutsy, brash and rasping instrumental voices united in triumph. --The New York Times The Rite of Spring of the 19th century was Wilfrid Mellers s description of Beethoven s Seventh. I ve never felt it more apt than when listening to this exhilarating recording made last November at Carnegie Hall, New York. Even if Weber didn't make the famous remark attributed to him- Beethoven is ripe for the madhouse you can understand his reaction. Played as the ORR play it, it can still make your hair stand on end. The Fifth is equally thrilling: Gardiner adopts Beethoven s original idea, a double scherzo and trio, which makes convincing sense of the finale s heroic, obsessive C major. --Sunday Times, 28/10/12 Gardiner's stylistic foundation is always at the service of the music's rhythm, energy and inner logic. **** --Financial Times, Nov'12 John Eliot Gardiner brings tremendous rhythmic drive and irresistible forward to both symphonies and revels in the sheer audacity of Beethoven's orchestration. Performance***** Recording ***** --BBC Music Magazine, Jan'13 From the very start, the cut-to-the-bone immediacy of the sound puts you up close and personal to the performance, lending a granite strength to the crunch of those chords and the rosiny resilence of those striding string scales.These are the kind of performances that remind us of what a revolution of reassessment period-instrument bands provoked. GRAMOPHONE CHOICE --Gramophone, Jan'13 Listeners sympathetic to Gardiners way with Beethoven should not hesitate-should the other seven symphhonies follow in turn , this would considerable advance on his Archiv cycle. --IRR, Mar'13 Product Description It was revolutionary, it was romantic, it was wonderful." The Times *****"The Allegretto was sinuous and haunting, the finale joyously visceral. And from fate's knock at the onset of the Fifth Symphony, Mr. Gardiner wrought Beethoven fresh and strange, with gutsy, brash and rasping instrumental voices united in triumph." The New York TimesNearly twenty years after their acclaimed Beethoven Symphonies recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique returned to this repertoire for the first time last year, in a tour that took them to London, Philadelphia, Washington and New York. The concert in Carnegie Hall was broadcast live by WQXR, who kindly agreed to make the recording available to us to release on our label.Performing on period instruments, the ORR brings light, clarity and brisk energy, as well as a warm and genuinely thrilling sound. The Seventh, famously described by Wagner as the "apotheosis of the dance", stands out by its sheer physical energy expressed in its many obsessively repetitive passages. The Fifth, often considered to be a deeply personal piece, also reveals echoes of revolutionary songs. The album is packaged in a digipack and contains a 36 pages booklet with original notes by BBC presenter and music journalist Stephen Johnson."