Credits:

Offenbach / Sollima / Noferini

Description:

The long-awaited box set (6 CDs) of the complete Beethoven symphonies by Antonini and the Basel Chamber Orchestra, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, is now available. Giovanni Antonini and the Basel Chamber Orchestra have been slowly working for 12 years to record Beethoven's complete symphonies in chronological order of composition across two labels, and now the long-awaited box set of the complete Beethoven symphonies is realized. This is an accomplishment! Antonini, a recorder player and founder of the Italian ancient music orchestra "Il Giardino armonico," has been an innovative performer of mainly Baroque music, but in the 2000s he also began to focus on conducting, expanding his repertoire to include post-Baroque and classical music. His recording of the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Basel Chamber Orchestra, for which he has been guest conductor since the 2015/16 season, began with the November 2004 recording of No. 1, and the first recording, coupled with No. 2 recorded the following year, was released by Oehms Classics in Germany and was spectacularly After the 2006 recording of No. 3 "Hero", the label was changed to Sony Classical, and the pace was slowed down to one session recording per year, and four years after the 2012 recording of No. 8, No. 9 was recorded in 2016. After four years since the recording of No. 8 in 2012, the project came to an impressive conclusion with No. 9 "Chorus" recorded in 2016.Antonini said of his Beethoven recordings with the Basel Chamber Orchestra. It's as if I've grown up with Beethoven over the past 12 years. It's as if I've grown up with Beethoven over the past 12 years, though perhaps still short in terms of the amount of time he spent on his creations. (...) One by one, I will establish a foothold, and after a period of returning to the baroque music and other repertoire that I have long been involved in, I will face Beethoven again. ...... It is significant that I will be able to open up a new perspective there again. For me, there was no need to rush into anything. (...) Many symbolic elements are recognizable in Beethoven's works, and you can sense something of the German way of thinking there. It is, of course, not impossible to read them as a message of ideology or politics based on metaphysical problems or social conditions of the time. But I want to focus first on the human energy emanating from the music itself, while standing on the score." (From an interview by Kazumasa Kiba during a guest performance with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in 2018)(1/2) Sony Music