GRAMOPHONE Review: Beethoven Symphony No.9 – Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine/Swensen

You might say that Joseph Swenson comes at this piece from the perspective of the start of the romantic era as opposed to the summation of the classical. The dynamic range is immediately wide, the hushed questioning of the strings, the explosive of the first tutti at either extreme. His is an incisive and fiery account of the unfolding drama but the quietudes – like the bewildering start of the first movement development – are searching and mysterious. Conversely the momentous climax of that development where the questioning opening becomes emphatically rhetorical, all roaring timpani and seismic bass lines. We are not quite in Furtwängler territory but heading that way.

Swenson and his Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine capture the radicalism of the piece and, more importantly, its urgency. The gritty resilient scherzo – driven again by explosive timpani – teeters toward spontaneous combustion with even its perky trio conveying an (albeit) elegant imperative.

Swenson and the orchestra really shine in the consoling cantabile of the slow movement its improvisatory tone drawing attention away from the variation form and in a sense unconsciously disguising it. This is songful loftiness beautifully, spontaneously, delivered by the band with elegant phrasing and blending. That glorious moment in strings just before the close is deeply reassuring considering the threat of the finale’s opening.

After those telling flashbacks to what has gone before Swenson’s voices are lusty in their joyfulness with all of the movement’s nodal points hit with terrific verve. The big choral tenuto before we march on to some kind of universal peace rally is hung on to with all due fervour. The message determined to hit home. And better yet Swenson has the communal dancing of the coda in his sights throughout the movement. The piccolo is as excited as anyone as that prestissimo at the close sweeps away the pomp of the maestoso which precedes it – which isn’t always the case in performances of the piece.

It is among the most recorded symphonies in the history of the gramophone but Swenson certainly commands attention.