Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 D Minor op. 125

"Excellent choral singing, very good solo work, and absolutely stunning live sonics (you can understand every word of the chorus, and the balance between voices and instruments is perfect) provide the icing on the cake. The result is as fine a Beethoven Ninth as we are likely to hear these days."
- Classics Today

Cannes Classical Award Winner 2004: Best Orchestral Recording 18th/19th Centuries

"What Norrington's performances bring out is Beethoven's
astounding joy, confidence and belief in humanity. I'm thrilled all over again by the magnificence of these works."
(Sunday Star Times)

Sixteen years after Sir Roger Norrington's controversial readings of the Beethoven Symphonies, the maestro returns to this repertoire with a new recording of the Ninth Symphony. This recording is the first release of all nine symphonies, scheduled to be completed by mid-2003.
Recorded from a live performance during the European Musicfest in Stuttgart in the summer of 2002, these new performances will be a fascinating document for collectors, as they experience how Norrington's conception of these scores has grown.

Performed on modern instruments, by an orchestra steeped in the traditions of the German Romantic School, an artistic tension is set in motion, and both conductor and the orchestra are transformed.
As with Sir Roger Norrington's acclaimed recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis (Hänssler 93006) "[Norrington] has a way of seeing the piece whole which makes the others' insights seem patchier.. " quote, BBC Music Magazine. The choice of instruments, whether old or new, plays a subordinate role for Roger Norrington. For him, it is the very essence of the work, with all its internal tensions and unique logic, as originally conceived by Beethoven that music be revealed.