Beethoven Symphonie no 6 “Pastorale”

https://www.discogs.com/Beethoven-Karajan-Berliner-Philharmoniker-Symphonie-No6-Pastorale/release/3283755

Open in Spotify

There is a good reason to distrust streaming services for classical music, especially Spotify. Try looking for this one. This is part of Von Karajans third Beethoven cycle. He made three sets of recordings of the whole series of nine symphonies of Beethoven, and all of them sound a little bit different.

The most famous one is his first, recorded between 1961 and 1963. I have listened to that one, and indeed, it sounds more lush, more full than this one. My recording is from the last cycle, recorded in 1984. It is generally thought of as not his best. In between he did another recording of the whole series in 1977. What can I say, the man loved his Beethoven.

Also, he was good at it. He is worldwide considered the best conductor for these works. He has further shaped the sound of one of the most renowned orchestras in the world: the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Now streaming services promise to give you all recordings in the world. So it should be there. They just don’t give you the tools to find them. Outside of Spotify there is a service called Roon that is practically a gods gift for classical music (and jazz btw). It gives you nice overviews, so you can really see all three cycles, choose, and hear the differences in the performance. But Roon is not a streaming service. It is born out of something they are missing: a good interface.

By the way: the link to Spotify might not be the right album, but it is the right recording. So I took out just one track.

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