COMPOSERS: Beethoven
LABELS: Philips Solo
WORKS: Symphony No. 5 in C minor; Symphony No. 6 in F (Pastoral)
PERFORMER: Philips Solo
CATALOGUE NO: 442 404-2 DDD (1987/88)
These are articulate, classically proportioned accounts of Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies from Bernard Haitink and the Royal Concertgebouw. As ever with Haitink, these performances have an engaging directness and (notably throughout the Fifth, and during the storm sequence of the Sixth) an avoidance of rhetoric.
With peerless playing from the great orchestra, burnished and radiant under Haitink, and with the Concertgebouw Hall imparting its own unique bloom to the sound, these accounts merit strong commendation. Michael Jameson