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"These performances are intensely alive and immensely invigorating." - BBC Music Magazine "Rattle and the Berliners are largely at one. Rattle may want fewer players on the platform than Furtwängler or Karajan – he uses roughly 50 musicians…but this remains the Berlin Philharmonic: its distinctive style revealingly intact. The first two symphonies are an untrammelled delight…[this] cycle is a decidedly distinguished affair" - Gramophone It is always a milestone in the artistic work of the Berliner Philharmoniker when, together with their chief conductor, they play the complete symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven. Under the direction of chief conductor Sir Simon Rattle, the cycle was performed at the end of 2015 – in Berlin, Paris, Vienna and New York. The reaction was overwhelming, and audiences responded with standing ovations to performances which impressively revealed the virtuosity and revolutionary energy of the works. “You can make Beethoven too sophisticated or too elegant, you can clean him up too much. You can try to make him agree with himself when often he’s fighting with himself. I have the feeling probably that the more plain-spoken this music is, the better it is. And one knows with this orchestra, when you say ʻwill you joyfully motor this machine off the clifftop?ʼ, everybody says ʻof course we willʼ.” - Sir Simon Rattle