Frans Bruggen & Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century - Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1-9 (2012) [SACD]

In an interview for the long defunct ABC Radio National program The Score (for which I was Producer at the time), Frans Brüggen said of Mozart symphonies: “There is no such thing as ‘interpretation’.” While this might at first sound a trifle odd, I think after all this time I can see what he meant. 
He wanted the composer to speak
 for himself. Brüggen established
 the Orchestra of the Eighteenth
 Century in a very specific
 manner. He recruited Europe’s
 leading specialists in historically 
informed performance practice 
to make his band. It is in fact a
 combination of expert practitioners
 who are also are researchers and avid collaborators. He wanted it to be (and it still is) a sort of permanent workshop, where 
the members are always working together and listening to each other in the search 
for authentic sonorities. The goal in all this pursuit of sound colours is to allow the music to reveal itself.
Previous cycles of Beethoven symphonies have had as their star not the composer, but the conductor. Herbert von Karajan’s cycles especially come to mind of course (as good
 as they are, they are completely different in intent and certainly in effect). The Dutch critic Roland de Beer, in his excellent essay, which accompanies this new set, explains that, since the early 1980s, Brüggen had searched libraries all over Europe for evidence of exactly how orchestral players “used” the music they were performing. His conclusion after many years was that Beethoven’s music is very far from the intimidating and granitic expression we had become used to. On the contrary, Brüggen wanted to show a composer full of subtlety and surprise. Why should it not be so? There’s far more to Schubert, for example, than the cliché of the misunderstood, shy genius he is sometimes portrayed as. So it is with Beethoven.
Listening to this outstanding 2011 cycle is revelatory. Not only is there far more in this music than I have ever heard before; it is indeed full of delightful surprises and wonderful subtlety. The colours of the woodwinds in the Pastoral symphony, for example, make for truly delightful effects. The storm crackles with a swirling, windblown energy. But there’s too much in this outstanding cycle to go into detail here. The Seventh is lyrical and rambunctious, the Fifth truly exciting, and the Ninth is rousing and inspiring. The recorded sound is up to Glossa’s usual standard of excellence. The real star of this cycle is not Frans Brüggen (as I’m sure he would agree), but Ludwig van Beethoven.