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Beethovenfest 2009

October 30, 2009

Combining tradition and originality seems to be the recipe for success for the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Paavo Jarvi. Listen to the fourth movement of Symphony No. 2.

https://p.dw.com/p/Jlng
Paavo Jarvi and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen
Image: Julia Baier

Estonian-American conductor Paavo Jarvi began his intensive collaboration with this group of musicians in 2004. Roughly half the size of a traditional orchestra, it has an uncustomary seating arrangement, with first and second violins distributed equally to the left and the right, and cellos and other lower strings seated behind them. As Jarvi told DW, "This is an original seating of the orchestras of Beethoven's time.'

Asked why he decided to record and perform the Beethoven cycle with the musicians from Bremen, he said, "I was immediately struck by the quality and energy of this orchestra. It has an incredibly strong point of view about these symphonies, which happens to coincide with how I hear them. I have a certain obsessive quest for details, obsessing about everything in order to try and find the truth."

This live-recorded performance of Beethoven's Second Symphony, composed in 1802, is one valid version of the "truth."

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