The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review says our new recording from the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck “provides personality, weight” to Beethoven’s Symphony Nos. 5 & 7:
“The new recording of Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 5 and 7 by Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is exceptionally compelling, featuring true individuality, committed playing and demonstration-quality sound. …The recording of Beethoven’s Seventh retains the striking force of Honeck’s 2009 performances, including an excellent tempo relationship between the Presto Scherzo and the finale, with the Scherzo faster. The CD includes fascinating program notes by Honeck, which, among many details, discusses some of his changes to the score, including having the violins play pizzicato at the end of the second movement of the Seventh and adding a rhythmic hemiola — asyncopation — he infers in the third movement of the Fifth. The conductors’ notes also refer to a study dividing approaches to Beethoven into three eras: romantic; modern and objective starting in 1950; and the contemporary historically informed approach. Honeck takes a post-historicist’s stance with this new recording. He’s absorbed the latest scholarship but interprets the music with more dimension, personality and weight.” —Mark Kanny, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review