Beethoven / Strauss

Album review

Due respect is rarely given to Beethoven's Septet, which he completed in 1800 - preceded by two first piano concertos, ten first Sonatas for piano, half a dozen quartets, and finished around the same time as the First Symphony - but had the composer wanted to, he could have made this Septet into a symphony in its own right, such is the richness and depth of the material, not to mention its forty-minute running time. What's more, Toscanini performed it in 1951, giving the string parts to the NBC Orchestra, without changing the structure of the wind section (clarinet, horn, bassoon). That said, its architecture across its six movements, is more like that of a serenade than the standard form of a symphony, which might explain how infrequently it is performed these days, beyond its unusual formation. The final movement contains one of Beethoven's smoothest themes - the second - with a level of emotion that prefigures the immortal theme of the Ninth. The soloists of the Montréal Symphony Orchestra don't hold back. To complement the rest of the programme, they offer us  Till Eulenspiegel einmal anders (Till Eulenspiegel, different for once, in our best english!), a delicious re-writing of a symphonic poem by Strauss for the same seven musicians who perform Beethoven's Septet. We only regret that this adaptation has made several pointless cuts to the score, on an album that only lasts 48 minutes - we could have easily enjoyed the entire Till. But there we are. © SM/Qobuz