CD recordings can set standards, but as Paavo Jarvi revealed to DW, "Live performances have an entirely different communicative value. You're also playing for people and not for microphones."

In this set of performances, the concert hall expands substantially, from Bonn's Beethovenhalle, where they were recorded, to the PC and the MP3 player. What remains is the one-time-only experience of an event, with a musical interpretation to fit.

In Jarvi's own words: "I think what we are looking for is flexibility and as much freedom as possible. Very often in the course of a performance, there are little junctions where you have options. My main job, at a given moment, is to listen and to feel where the music wants to go. But for that you need to be emotionally very, very open. It is kind of like a raw nerve. And you also have to have an orchestra that is able to turn on a dime in case an idea that we never thought of comes at that moment. Very often it happens. I’m a strong believer in emotional intelligence."

There are ample amounts of that in Jarvi's take of the first movement from Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, written in 1812.

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