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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: A fresh take on 9th by the OSM

Post Subject: A fresh take on 9th by the OSMPosted by Dominic on: 2/16/2013

The 4th movement of Beethoven's was playing on the radio the other day and my ears perked up. I almost didn't recognize it at all. I was quite surprised to find out that it was performed by my humble local Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal and the characterful Kent Nagano waving the stick.
I did a little shuffling around and found out that it was recorded pretty recently and is packaged as the whole symphony with a performance of the poem "where have you gone my revolutionary friend?" by Yann Martel by way of introduction which is repeated after the finale in the original french.

http://www.analekta.com/en/album/?orchestre-symphonique-de-montreal-beethoven-9th-symphony-human-misery-human-love.1674.html

The caveat is that so far i've only properly listened to the 4th movement. What i did hear was rather unusual. Most i've heard, from Furtwangler to Szell treat the finale as a a very constant piece, whole unto itself but the variation from passage to passage in this version is striking to the extent that you might wonder what you're listening to. There's a hymn like quality to this interpretation that you might find hinted at in other versions.

No idea how the CD sounds

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