Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 7

This penultimate concert, consisting of Beethoven’s Second and Seventh Symphonies from 17 August 1980 by the legendary Austrian conductor Karl Böhm in his old age, just days short of a yea before his death, reveals the intense mutual commitment he enjoyed with the wonderful Vienna Philharmonic, an orchestra he regarded as “his own”. Their art of interpretation is exemplary in its naturalness, offering broad brushstrokes of color and imagination and an eager attention to important, telling detail that lift performances of these works to the level of compositional mastery already on full display.