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For the Building a Library feature in the September issue of BBC Music Magazine, writer Erik Levi takes on a daunting task: sorting through the dozens of recordings of Beethoven's complete symphonies to recommend a single best recording and three more "greats."
Riccardo Chailly's 2011 Decca set with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra comes out on top for its overall "engrossing nature," but our own Minnesota Orchestra, under the baton of Osmo Vänskä for their 2004-8 BIS set, earn one of the three runner-up slots — putting them in league with Wilhelm Furtwängler's iconic 1948-54 interpretations and John Eliot Gardiner's game-changing historically-informed 1994 set, vaulting Vänskä's Beethoven past heavyweights like Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, and Simon Rattle.
"The Finnish conductor manages to capture the essence of Beethoven's thinking through his painstaking attention to inner details," writes Levi. (The article is not available online.) Vänskä, continues Levi, "has established a sense of partnership with a first-rate orchestra and secures urgent and incisive playing."
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