Anyone familiar with BIS' variable sound quality should feel a little cautious about acquiring this SACD of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor because the recording is not quite state of the art and quite frustrating to deal with. Granted, there's no lack of details in this meticulous performance by Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchesta and Chorale, nor any concern that the musicians have seriously misinterpreted the score, so for a satisfactory reading that has all the notes, this one will do nicely. But SACDs aren't ...
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Anyone familiar with BIS' variable sound quality should feel a little cautious about acquiring this SACD of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor because the recording is not quite state of the art and quite frustrating to deal with. Granted, there's no lack of details in this meticulous performance by Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchesta and Chorale, nor any concern that the musicians have seriously misinterpreted the score, so for a satisfactory reading that has all the notes, this one will do nicely. But SACDs aren't supposed to sound this stuffy, sterile, and airless, and the orchestra shouldn't sound so clinically miked. A multichannel recording like this should sound fabulously resonant and vibrantly alive, not mixed down to some middling audio level that can be played safely on ordinary stereo equipment. Alas, this is about as dull as any DSD recording of the Ninth can sound, and the levels are so low that it's easy to miscalculate volume settings. The worst aspect of this mixing down is the...
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Add this copy of Symphony 9 to cart. $21.80, new condition, Sold by Importcds rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Sunrise, FL, UNITED STATES, published 2006 by BIS.
