Jun 15 2008
Beethoven Symphonies : Jos van Immerseel
Sometimes we find a recording that blows our mind. This weekend I had one of those experiences. During the book fair I was talking with José Carlos Fernandes and he told me about this great Jos van Immerseel recording of Beethoven symphonies – and I was curious and heard some samples on itunes. It was so shocking that I went immediately to buy the complete set!
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BEETHOVEN The Nine Symphonies
Overtures: The Consecration of the House, Coriolan, The Ruins of Athens, The Creatures of Prometheus, Marcia alla Turca
With their knowledge & experience of period-instrument performances of a varied repertoire – Classical (Mozart, Haydn), Austro-German Romantic (Brahms, Johann Strauss), Russian (Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin), and finally Ravel – the musicians of Anima Eterna have returned to Beethoven with the perspective and mastery acquired as a symphony orchestra.
Jos van Immerseel has taken great care to find the correct combination of tempos, numerical forces and instruments for each symphony.
‘We know that Beethoven asked musicians very precise questions about the technical capacities of their instruments. So he knew exactly what he was doing when he pushed an instrument to the very limit of its possibilities. It’s partly the great technical difficulty that makes his music so revolutionary, but also the dramatic character this element confers on the music (and this dramatisation is further emphasised if one respects contemporary pitch standards, which were high – at least 440, if not more). That’s why it is so important to perform this music on period instruments..’ Jos van Immerseel
This research into tempos, orchestral forces and instruments makes it possible not only to obtain a characteristic timbre, but also to push these period instruments to their technical limits and thus to rediscover something of the challenging nature of Beethoven’s music, rather as it was experienced by Hector Berlioz when he discovered it through the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in Paris in 1828. He wrote at the time: ‘At another point on the horizon, I saw the immense Beethoven rising. The jolt this gave me was almost comparable to the one I had received from Shakespeare. He opened up a new world in music for me, just as the playwright had revealed to me a new universe in poetry.’
(source mdt.co.uk)
The Beethoven Symphonies : Jos van Immerseel by Roberto Macedo Alves, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Portugal License.