These two new Beethoven cycles are in many respects antithetical, though to hear them in tandem is to be reminded of the tremendous interpretative diversity his music permits. Both were recorded last year. The Hyperion set derives from BBC broadcasts of Charles Mackerras's Edinburgh festival cycle and features the two UK orchestras with which he is primarily associated - the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, who play the first eight, and the Philharmonia, who take over for the Ninth. Mikhail Pletnev's DG cycle with his Russian National Orchestra was taped in Moscow following an intensive series of concerts. Both are hugely personal. Broadly speaking, Mackerras presents each symphony as self-contained, and the stylistic range of the cycle as a whole is striking. Pletnev, more contentiously, is anxious to find a unity of revolutionary purpose that links all nine.
Pletnev's avowed aim is that "every phrase, scream and moment of joy [should be] lived through as intensely as in our real lives". In the process, however, he steers us closer than Mackerras to the conventionally held view of Beethoven as predominantly snarling and titanic. His speeds can be wayward and exaggerated and he sometimes cramps Beethoven's emotional range. What crucially slips is the humour. Pletnev is dour in the first two symphonies, where Mackerras emphasises the often witty experiments with classical form that preceded the epoch-making structural overhaul of the Eroica. The Fourth, in which Beethoven plays endless games by confounding listeners' expectations, is the hardest of the series to get right: Mackerras is bang on with every stylistic jolt here, while Pletnev seems over-deliberate.
Pletnev, however, sometimes takes us to extremes in ways that Mackerras does not. His Fifth is both savage and elated, while Mackerras's is low-key by comparison. Pletnev's Seventh is also more transparent and more overtly Dionysian than its opposite number. Neither Pastoral is ideal - Mackerras is overly classical and severe, and Pletnev's speeds are again too erratic. Both Eighths are superb, if contradictory: Mackerras is unusually nostalgic, Pletnev very grand and doggedly turbulent. You can't fault the Ninths, either. Whether you prefer Pletnev's hieratic, ritual approach to Mackerras's deep humanity is a matter of taste. Both recordings have some extraneous noise. There's coughing and platform clatter on the Mackerras set. Pletnev, meanwhile, can be heard singing along, though never intrusively.
