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.’

Zig-Zag Territoires 6cds ZZT0804026