Norrington's 'Uniquely Important' Beethoven 9

Nearly 40 years ago, when Roger Norrington's recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony first appeared on the market, it was considered "uniquely important" by critic Richard Osborne of The Gramophone.

Sir Roger has now died at age 91, so today let's reassess this performance and the reasons why it was so well received.

The first thing to mention is that it is what today we would call a "historically informed performance." The instruments are similar to those used back in 1824, when the symphony was first heard. The performance practices are of the time. And the tempos follow the composer's guidance - unusual in 1987.

Roger Norrington

The 1980s witnessed a flowering of such performances. Norrington's was, I believe, the first Beethoven symphony cycle of its type, but others were in process and many more were to come. On the Norrington recording, Osborne writes that it displays "glimmering, vibrato-free strings, plaintive woodwinds, keen toned and at times strangely keening horns and trumpets, and those wonderful small, hard, sonically explosive drums."

Norrington views the Ninth "looking, Januslike, both backwards and forwards from its historical vantage-point in 1824 ... [T]here is no doubt that by using period instruments and a smallish choir, all admirably caught on LP by EMI in this lively Abbey Road Studio No. 1 recording, Norrington has given us an account of the Ninth that is both uniquely persuasive and uniquely important."

[An aside - unless the LP sound has somehow deteriorated over the past 40 years, the recording quality was not all that good to begin with - dim and boomy, which I have addressed.]

As for the tempos that I mentioned above, both Osborne and Richard Freed in Stereo Review were generally if not universally convinced. Freed: "[T]he start of the vast final movement is refreshingly free of the expected monumentalism: When the great 'Joy' theme makes its first appearance, it does not lumber, it flows. The bass recitative, still in tempo, may strike some listeners as being too nervously agitated when what is wanted is a reassuring gesture of peace, but that is probably the only conceivable objection one might have to the entire performance..."

Of course there are other ways to interpret Beethoven than historically informed performances. As Osborne wrote, "[I]t is not Norrington's aim to give us a transcendental Ninth in the Furtwängler style. This is a Ninth which owes nothing to Wagner but quite a lot to Bach and Haydn."

Norrington - genial and relaxed

That is not to say that Norrington was inflexible or stern: he was famously genial and generally relaxed on the podium. He wanted the audience to enjoy themselves and encouraged applause between movements of a symphony. 

In Norrington's New York Times obituary (gift link) he is quoted as remarking that he didn't conduct the great orchestras of America and Europe until relatively late in his life, meaning that "I actually knew what I wanted. And this meant I could relax and treat music-making as something that is full of love and laughter. It’s not about consecrating a sacred object. It’s about exploring and being curious and having fun.”

Allan Kozinn in the New York Times: "He rebelled against the notion that one could recreate historical performance styles by merely playing what was written on the page. And he inveighed against those who treated performances as museum pieces.

"'A performance is for now, and one instinctively tailors it for today,' he said in a 1989 interview, adding, 'To say that you don’t put your personality into it is rubbish.'"

Coincidentally, I am working on a post that will feature several Beethoven compositions led by the famed conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, he of the "transcendental style" mentioned above. These performances are indeed a contrast to Norrington's. Neither is wrong or right; just different. One aspect of enjoying such music is in relishing the difference in performance styles.

Norrington has appeared on this blog twice in recent years, with fine recordings of Schütz's Christmas Story and of baroque Christmas music.

One final note: while I transferred the Beethoven Ninth performance from my LP copy and have included the related scans, I have added the booklet from the corresponding CD issue because it includes an additional essay missing from the LP and much more information about the performers, etc. Also in the package are the two reviews cited above, along with a contemporary article on Norrington.

LINK to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony