VERBIER FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA, FABOR TAKACS-NAGY - BEETHOVEN: COMPLETE SYMPHONIES [5CD]

Format: 5 x CD
Catalogue No.: 4864117
Barcode: 28948641178
Release Date: 09 Jun 2023
Genre: Classical

•Over a thirteen-year period (2009–2022), Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra embarked on a spiritual journey through the nine symphonies of Beethoven. The resultant cycle of recordings captures the ensemble's liberated and transformative account of these masterworks, approaching each opus with a sense of spontaneity, insight, and joy. In the words of legendary Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford: "Honesty is what we hear: no romantic lushness, no ego, rather a sense of the truth of each piece on its own terms. There is a sense of intimate communication between an orchestra and conductor in service of a vision of the works as individuals and as a whole.”
•The recordings take us on an exciting journey where we can share in the curiosity, the enthusiasm, and the spirit of exploration to rediscover a great and much played composer for our time.
•We hear neither a large-scale orchestral sound nor the hurried tempi and reduced sound of historical performance practice. Here we experience a collective search for what Beethoven was really about: the quest for truth and humanity.
•Let's call it "the birth of symphony out of the spirit of the string quartet": Hungarian conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy, founder, and namesake of the legendary Takács Quartet, takes a chamber music approach. For 17 years he regularly played the complete Beethoven string quartets on the world's stages as first violinist, before turning to the symphonies as conductor, with the essence of Beethoven's music is in his blood.
•The 44-page booklet contains exciting introductions to each symphony by the celebrated American Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford, who also talks to Gábor Takács-Nagy. A brilliant conversation between two connoissurs in their own field: witty and exciting, in which the conductor reveals himself to be a great, humanistic man, full of loving curiosity, childlike wonder and keen insight.