Is anyone else as struck by the Bruggen Beethoven 9 recording from 1993?
There are many great recordings of this piece but this one struck me like a thunderbolt, as if the conductor and orchestra were all possessed, channeling Beethoven, delivering what it might have sounded like to audiences when it was new music. It unfolds with such organic electricity, as if somebody tipped the score sideways and the notes simply rolled off the pages, struck the ground, and sprouted into a forest of cataclysmic drama and beauty, all with a perfect, irresistible synchronicity with the laws of physics and gravity. The musicians are not playing the music; it is playing them.
Posted Aug 14, 2026, 10:10 PM UTC
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