This is the second recording in a cycle of the complete symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven by conductor Jan Willem De Vriend and the Netherlands Symphony orchestra, and features Nos. 1 and 5. As with the previous title (CC72361) which included the Fourth and Sixth Symphonies, it is being made available as a hybrid SACD.

Jan Willem de Vriend is the artistic director of Combattimento Consort Amsterdam and since 2006 has been the chief conductor and artistic director of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. De Vriend has been a guest conductor with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, The Hague Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra is based in the province of Overijssel and performs concert series in Enschede, Hengelo, Zwolle and Deventer. Another important role for the orchestra is accompanying De Nationale Reisopera and provincial choral societies.

According to conductor Jan Willem de Vriend Beethoven’s celebrated Fifth Symphony is a musical response by the composer to the repressiveness and authoritarianism of the period of the Metternich government of the time. He hears it clearly in the motif of the first movement, and for him the entire symphony seems like a process of breaking free from it.