Osmo Vanska - Beethoven: Symphony No. 2 & 7

The first installment in Osmo Vanska's and Minnesota Orchestra's Beethoven cycle was released in December 2004 and was immediately praised for the performances ("as compelling as any, beautifully realized in every respect") as well as for the stat-of-the-art sound ("the multichannel illuminates both the music and the performance and demonstrates what home audio ought to be about"). With such forerunners it is not surprising that the present disc, closing the cycle, has been eagerly awaited. The disc opens with Symphony No. 2, completed in 1802 during one of the darkest periods of the composer's life, as he was struggling to reconcile himself with his encroaching deafness. Under the circumstances, as Beethoven specialist Barry Cooper points out in his liner notes, a striking feature of the work is "its thoroughly optimistic character throughout – it is almost as if he was using the symphony as a means of escape."