Norrigton's Beethoven

[RebLem]

I just finished listening to a relatively new cycle of the Beethoven Symphonies recorded live in concert in 2002 by the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR conducted by Sir Roger Norrington, its music director. It has been issued on the hanssler label. I found most of the performances disappointing, but two exceptional performanes stand out: the Fifth and the Ninth.

This is Norrignton's second go round in this repertoire. The first, with the London Classical Players, was recorded for EMI at their Abbey Road Studios in London, 1986-88. The ensemble was a period instruments ensemble, and those recordings were hailed by reviewers as pathmaking efforts in Beethoven interpretation. To my ears, though, they seemed to be good but fairly unremarkable performances from an interpretive standpoint. This new set, however, is with a modern symphony orchestra but, paradoxically, its two specially remarkable performances present some novel and very interesting interpretive insights.

Norrington's new Fifth has what seems the fastest tempoed first movement I have ever heard; it is fleet and magnificent, and the last movement, too, is worked up into a fine fettle--not quite as orgasmic as Fritz Reiner or Carlos Kleiber, but pretty impressive, nevertheless.

Norrington's new Ninth, though, is one of the very greatest performances of this work ever committed for posterity. The whole work times out at 61'28", the last twenty seconds or so of which is applause, so this is one of the faster ones on record. I am not going to go through my entire collection checking on speeds, but to the best of my recollection, only the Gardiner and Reiner recordings are faster.

The first movement is fleet, but still muscular, not at all slight. The scherzo has stronger, more pointed accents than most performances, and the tihrd movement is very unusual. It is probably the third movement which differs most from traditional practice. Most performances seem like somnolent reveries; Norrington's is full of excitement with lots of slight and a few notable tempo shifts, which help sustain interest. Franz-Josef Selig is a true bass, not a bass baritone or baritone, and he is perfectly matched by Camilla Nylund, soprano, Iris Vermillion, alto, and Jonas Kaufmann, tenor. On its first mention, the word "Kuss" receives special emphasis, as it does in a few other recordings, especially those of Mengelberg and Dorati, but later mentions of the word do not receive the same emphasis. In the Turkish music section, the horn is set off from the percussion in an way that provides a more pronounced contrast than I find in any other performance. The vocal quartet members are in nearly perfect balance with one another, and they as a group with the chorus as well, This leads to a finale which is truly a bravura performance by all concerned. The finale does not accellerate quite as much here as in most recordings, but it does accelerate, as Dorati does not; Mengelberg actually slows down for the last five or six bars. Altogether, it is one of the truly great Ninths, along with Tennstedt, the Klemperer studio recording, the Toscanini performance and that of George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. Highly recommended.

[Belle]

It's interesting that you mention Kleiber and Tennstedt in the same posting because the former was a huge fan of the latter. Huge!!

That Stuttgart orchestra of which you speak, which Norrington conducted, has recently been amalgamated with another German orchestra (name forgotten). One of their last appearances together - if not THE last - was at the Proms last year. They played the Brahms #1 and it was as idiosyncratic a reading as I've ever heard; thin textures, playing with a HIP sensibility, too-fast tempi and not at all how I understand Brahms. Norrington is something of a polemicist, then.

Your appraisal of the Beethoven #9 provided excellent reading.

[John F]

Roger Norrington is yesterday's news, isn't he? His HIP Beethoven cycle on EMI was the first large-scale such project in 19th century music, I believe, and I was actually induced by the reviews to buy a couple of the LPs. What made them remarkable, and was widely remarked on, was Norrington's generally following Beethoven's notoriously fast metronome marks, and the remarkable prominence he gave to the brass and timpani. When Richard Taruskin, profoundly skeptical of the claims and actual achievements of the "early music" approach to Beethoven, ends his review "nor have I any doubt that Roger Norrington is the next great Beethoven conductor," I had to get the record of the 2nd and 8th symphonies that set him raving. And the 8th in particular works well with Norrington's fast and tight approach.

But when Taruskin came to review Norrington's 9th, he was somewhat disappointed, especially with the finale. Interestingly, he chose to compare it with the recording which is its direct opposite, Furtwängler's 1951 Bayreuth performance. Having found fault with both, Taruskin concludes: "Though full of surface distortions, Furtwängler's performance makes disclosure after spinetingling disclosure of the spiritual content of the music by means of inspirational, unnotated emphases, pointing to unsuspected musical parallels that link widely dispersed passages." Which he spells out technically, at too great length to quote here. (These reviews are in "Text & Act: Essays on Music and Performance," a collection of previously published material that's well worth reading.)

Taruskin doesn't do record reviews any more, so we won't find out whether he thinks Norrington's new 9th is an improvement on the old one, or that Norrington is a great Beethoven conductor. For myself, I have dozens of recordings of each Beethoven symphony, and far from adding to them, I'm in the process of disposing of them. For me, that book is closed.

[Belle]

I used to be a fan of Norrington (especially Schubert #9), until I heard the Brahms I've previously mentioned. Here is a page from a forum where we discussed the Proms performance/s in question. As you can see, there is varied opinion on this conductor:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.p ... ahms/page8

[jserraglio]

His Vaughan Williams cycle (minus the Seventh) is very good. Deutsches-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Live 2012-2016. His first LvB cycle not so much. True or not, the story I heard is that rehearsing Beethoven with Norrington, the Cleveland Orch winds blew "farts".

[maestrob]

Norrington's Beethoven is "old hat" by now, and I have both cycles; there are good things and bad things to say about each. Norrington's Ninth doesn't please me, especially in the final movement, because he simply doesn't solve some of the conductorial problems, making the music awkward in places. As for VIII, he refuses to pull back slightly from Beethoven's marked tempo in the last movement, making it unplayable. Toscanini wisely does, and some of the newer HIP sets do so as well, so I'm more satisfied.

All in all, it's not just tempo that makes music great, but the interpretation of the flow of the beat, and Norrington misses that in places. Still, he has interesting ideas (dynamics, for instance) in many places that we mere mortals can learn from, so I'm glad I have his work, flawed as it may be.

[Holden Fourth]

Just listened to the 5th. I like the swift tempos in this work and it was quite a good performance but seemed to lack 'bite'.

It is for this reason that I always return to HvK (gasp). His readings from the 60s are incredible. There is/was a black and white video on Youtube from the late 50s I believe that is simply awesome but I can't find it any more. I'll keep looking.

EDIT: Found the first movement only

https://youtu.be/QpPZW3bFSyM

It looks like a Clouzot film.

[jserraglio]

. . . I always return to HvK (gasp). His readings from the 60s are incredible..

If anybody here happens to have Amazon Prime, the entire 1960s HvK LvB cycle is available for listening at no additional cost in the Karajan Symphony Edition (2008). I've been listening to his Bruckner cycle this week.

[maestrob]

That's an excellent cycle, IMHO, even though the climaxes can feel somewhat constrained.

[Lance]

I have never been a huge fan of Norrington, and certainly have been much more appreciative of von Karajan though not always my first choice either. I, too, have found his Beethoven 9 from the 1960s to be among the best recorded as a complete package. Quite different from the early EMI and the later DGG recordings. Karajan was no doubt at his peak when those 1960s analogue discs were made. I had them in the lovely LP box and enjoyed them so much that I wanted the CDs. Given all the complete sets of the "9" I have plus countless individual recordings of the symphonies, I no longer acquire any Beethoven symphonies unless one is unearthed by a conductor from the more historical period - and there has not been much of late. I also loved the "9" as rendered by Felix Weingartner as brought out years ago on EMI-Japan LPs.

Just listened to the 5th. I like the swift tempos in this work and it was quite a good performance but seemed to lack 'bite'.

It is for this reason that I always return to HvK (gasp). His readings from the 60s are incredible. There is/was a black and white video on Youtube from the late 50s I believe that is simply awesome but I can't find it any more. I'll keep looking.

EDIT: Found the first movement only

https://youtu.be/QpPZW3bFSyM

It looks like a Clouzot film.