Schubert’s ‘Great ‘ C Major Symphony with Harnoncourt is Top Choice on Record Review!

We are thrilled that our recording of Schubert’s 9th Symphony with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, made in 1988 and released by ICA Classics in 2020, was selected as the top choice by Katy Hamilton on the very respected BBC Radio 3’s Record Review programme! Up against the three other ‘finalists’ in Katy’s selection – Abbado/Orchestra Mozart, Bernstein/Royal Concertgebouw and Blomstedt/Gewandhaus – Harnoncourt and the COE just took the edge. She said: “the thing that Harnoncourt brings to this is such a variety of colour and sound and attack and emotion. You know, we heard that bleakness, he gets the darker qualities out of this piece too. His wife writes in the sleeve’s notes for this disc: ‘After he had finished with it, the symphony was a bright surprise, disconcerting, not to everyone’s taste, but no longer familiar or to be heard in the background.’ And frankly, who can resist that?”