The moral law within us; the starry heavens above us

I'm not really qualified to guide anyone through Beethoven's nine symphonies, or the buhzillion recordings of them. I'll keep this post brief, but I think it's worth picking up a thread begun by Paul Wells in October 2008. Wells offered his recommendations on the finest recordings of the complete cycle (i.e., all nine Beethoven symphonies recorded by a single conductor and orchestra — no small undertaking).

I enthusiastically endorse Wells's second pick:  Paavo Jarvi conducting the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. Jarvi conducts at lickety-split tempos — as Wells says, these are "tremendously exciting performances" — and yet they remain both precise and nuanced.

There's one recording of the cycle that I heartily recommend, but which Wells doesn't mention. That's why I say I'll be picking up the thread where Wells left off.



Claudio Abbado has recorded the cycle three times, twice with the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra. The original recording with the Berlin Philharmonic was made in 2000. The second was recorded only a year later, although it was not released on CD until 2009. Abbado felt that their interpretation of the music had matured after numerous performances, even though only a year had passed.

Since I don't claim to be an expert, I'll merely pass along a quote from classicalcdreview:

The conductor elected to use fewer strings, reducing the bass group in symphonies 1, 2, 4 and 8 to only three double basses and four cellos. He also uses only two horns in symphony 5, three in symphony 3. The result is an uncommonly transparent listening experience.

"Transparent" is an important compliment in this context. Symphonies, because of their enormous size, are difficult to record well; and it's difficult for a stereo system to reproduce the music satisfactorily. To describe the Abbado recordings as "uncommonly transparent" is to praise these recordings for the clarity of the sound.

Even so, I found that these recordings were too much for my previous CD player (a Cambridge Audio Azur 640C) to handle. The presentation is much better on my Rega Saturn.

(I should hope it would be, given that the Saturn is approximately four times as expensive as the Azur 640C. Cambridge Audio is universally praised for giving you good value for your money. Even so — if you pay significantly more, you ought to notice a significant improvement!)

In the final analysis, even a very good CD player can't improve on the quality of the recording — it can only reveal the quality (whether good or poor) of the sound encoded on the CD. My Saturn reveals that the Abbado cycle is impressively well recorded, bearing in mind the unwieldiness of a symphony orchestra.

Songwriting:  ★★★★★ (It goes without saying;
but I'm following my standard format here.)
Performance:  ★★★★★
Sound quality:  ★★★☆☆
In a word:  Sublime.