Riccardo Minasi's Eroica strips Beethoven down to shock

Riccardo Minasi's new recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, the "Eroica," with Ensemble Resonanz, strips away centuries of accumulated performance tradition and returns the symphony to what the review calls its "acerbic 19th-century innovation." The result is startling — and, at times, deliberately provocative.

The reviewer's verdict is double-edged: the performance is "thrilling," but "the determination to shock often feels self-conscious." Both halves of that judgment matter for anyone deciding whether this recording belongs on their shelf.

What did Beethoven's contemporaries actually fear?

The review anchors its argument in a remarkable historical document. In 1816, a young Franz Schubert attacked Beethoven head-on, accusing him of promoting a musical eccentricity that muddled "the agreeable with the repulsive, heroism with howlings and the holiest with harlequinades" in order to "goad people to madness."

Schubert's complaint is the key to Minasi's project. The conductor, working from original sources, demonstrates precisely what contemporaries were afraid of. The Eroica wasn't just another symphony in 1804 — it was a provocation, and Minasi wants listeners to feel that discomfort two centuries later.

How does the performance sound?

The opening movement sets the terms. Antsy modern strings, in the reviewer's phrasing, "tear up the musical tarmac," while period brass and percussion "hammer nails into the coffin of Mozartian classicism." This is Beethoven as rupture, not continuation.

The intensity holds across all four movements:

• Dynamic markings (the composer's instructions for loudness) are "interpreted to the max"
• The funeral march "shrieks and shudders"
• The scherzo "gallops"
• The finale "stamps its feet"

Ensemble Resonanz fields just 21 string players, yet the review finds "a compelling weight" to the group's sound. Small forces, heavy impact — that's the mechanism at work.

What does this change for the listener?

Two caveats temper the praise. First, there's "not a great deal of warmth" in the sound. Second, the microphones sit so close they seem "welded to the instruments themselves," exaggerating the recording's clinical edge.

So what does this change for the ordinary Beethoven listener? If you want the Eroica as a warm, familiar monument, this isn't your recording. If you want to hear why 19th-century audiences found Beethoven genuinely alarming — the dissonances, the violent contrasts, the refusal to comfort — Minasi makes the case vividly.

The reviewer's closing judgment keeps the door open: "Minasi has a great deal to say, and there's plenty here guaranteed to fuel a heated debate." For a 220-year-old symphony, sparking argument is no small achievement.

The recording is available now on Apple Music.