Charles E. Brown

As a classical musician, and listener, I have one main criteria for any performance: Teach me something new about the work. If you are going to travel down well-worn roads why bother?

One of my loves in life is listening to Sirius-XM Radio.  I have it on my computer and in my car. They never fail to find the best of performances.

There is no work more over-played and associated with classical music than the Beethoven 5th Symphony in C-minor. I have heard hundreds of good and bad performances of this work over many years. However I have never heard a performance of this symphony like I heard on the radio 2-days ago.

The performance was conductor Sir Roger Norrington conducting the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart orchestra and released in 2002. I felt like I was hearing the work for the first time.

Norrington conducts with a VERY brisk tempo. But instead of sounding rushed he brings out a lot of rhythmic vitality and excitement. He also brings out remarkable inner voices that I had never paid attention to before.

I had to pull into the parking lot of my destination and hear the rest of the performance. When I got home I jumped into iTunes to sample the recordings of the other 8 symphonies. I purchased them all (should I join Spotify?).

Whether you just want a good recording of a well-known work, another set of the Beethoven Symphonies, or a first complete set, I cannot recommend these recordings highly enough. Just a suggestion: get the 2002 releases rather than his earlier ones.

Thank you to Sirius radio for introducing me to these wonderful works.