Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 ”Eroica” (Mariss Jansons) (CD, Br-Klassik)

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra has already performed several concerts with Beethoven symphony cycles. Mariss Jansons, who died in 2019, had expanded this cycle idea in two ways: to specially awarded composition commissions in which contemporary composers contributed their own musical reflections on Beethoven symphonies, and to the presentation of the outstanding concert events in live recordings in the sound carrier market. After the award-winning complete edition (BR-KLASSIK, 900119) met with the best response from critics and the public, BR-KLASSIK is also presenting Beethoven’s symphonies in individual editions. As a prelude, the Third Symphony in E flat major, op. 55, will be released in a live recording from 2012 from the Hercules Hall in Munich, which is juxtaposed with a work by the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin (* 1932). In his symphonic fragment of Beethoven’s Heiligenstädter Testament, Shchedrin uses the harrowing document in which Beethoven describes his progressive deafness as an intellectual link to the Eroica, which was written at about the same time.