It can't be often that this symphony is offered as a "filler" to a concerto cycle, but essentially that is how it is presented here, as a coupling to the Choral Fantasy. This is the ninth presented as an arrangement for a wind ensemble, with string accompaniment. A very different take on anything that has been heard before, and quite possibly taking us back to how it would have been heard by Beethoven's first audience. Whether this makes for a fascinating rethink of performance practice or reducing Beethoven to the status of ordinary mortal is the listener's choice.
It has to be said that the recording is spectacular, with details which one would normally expect to be hidden with the fabric of the music, revealed in crystalline immediacy,
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