Search - Beethoven, Edlinger :: Symphonies 3 & 8

A Central European Beethoven

David A. Baer | Indianapolis, IN USA | 01/25/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Under the baton of Austrian conductors Michael Halász and Richard Edlinger (the latter tragically deceased at the age of 47), the Czech Radio Orchestra and the Zagreb Philharmonia Orchestra produce a fine, Central European reading of Beethoven's Third and Eighth Symphonies, respectively. Performed a year before the collapse of the Soviet block radically redefined the political realities of two countries (Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) that can now be named only after supplying the prefix 'Former', this high-quality Naxos release reminds us how artistic labors continued unabated under the 'soft' Communism of the countries that host these respected orchestras.



Both the Third and the Eighth proceed briskly on this album. The careful listener would do well to enjoy these performances alongside the more ponderous readings--with their Germanic gravitas--that are more common just to the West.



The 'Eroica's' splendid and funereal second movement exhibits all the solemnity it requires but, having achieved this, adds no more. The other seven movements of the collected symphonies bring to mind the adjective 'light-hearted', though hardly in a dismissive or pejorative sense.



Naxos now bills itself 'The World's Leading Classical Music Label'. A CD like this one justifies the boast as plausible."