This is Abbado's 'remake' of his second Symphony Cycle -- the live recordings with the Berliners from Rome, where he manages to let loose and stoke the orchestra's flames for an immediately more arresting, riveting impression. This is Abbado at his most exciting. And in fact, the set is tremendous and, I think, rightly one of the foremost modern mainstream recommendations. The Ninth Symphony, meanwhile, still hails from the Berlin-Berlin cycle. It is not the strength of this cycle. The DVD set of the "Rome" cycle (IIIb) contains a live performance, trading Quasthoff for Eike Wilm Schulte, which turns out a boon. But the best Ninth of Abbado's remains his
Salzburg Ninth on Sony, anyway. Still in the more traditional mold, but amazing. The original burgundy box of this cycle includes fine documentation. The (slightly shoddy) Eloquence set amazingly brandishes a claim of these recordings, except for the 9th, being made in 2008. I think we would have heard about it, if Abbado had recorded a fourth cycle of these works and suspect a typo, instead.
