Beethoven. Every­one plays Beethoven, as every­one should. He’s not only one of the greats, arguably the great­est, but his music is end­lessly appeal­ing and sat­is­fy­ing, and he’s accepted eas­ily by the pub­lic as a com­poser of great art music that is emo­tional and intel­lec­tu­ally stim­u­lat­ing with­out any tech­ni­cal or his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge of clas­si­cal music. He is the uni­ver­sal composer.

Have you ever talked about clas­si­cal music with strangers in bars? I have. I vividly remem­ber one such con­ver­sa­tion in the Alibi Club on Dekalb Avenue in Brook­lyn, some­time in the late 1980s. Just one of the chats with the guy on the adja­cent bar stool, some­one in the neigh­bor­hood, about jazz and rock, but also about Beethoven, how you had to have a set of the Beethoven Sym­phonies, that he is the song of the soul.

So I can be excused, I hope, for hav­ing fif­teen com­plete Beethoven sym­phony cycles, six­teen if you count the par­tial set of live record­ings led by Wil­helm Furt­wan­gler dur­ing World War II, which is an essen­tial com­po­nent of any music library. They are all dif­fer­ent, all with some­thing to say, all — includ­ing ones that I don’t love but find fas­ci­nat­ing, like John Elliot Gardiner’s set — valu­able. It’s cer­tainly more than enough, though, and so when new sym­phony cycles are issued, they have to be highly com­pelling to draw my attention.

My atten­tion was drawn, recently, to the new sym­phony cycle from con­duc­tor Chris­t­ian Thiele­mann and the Vienna Sym­phony, six live discs and one DVD in a nice pack­age from Sony. This did not come to me as a promo, I spent a a good por­tion of a lim­ited bud­get on it, fol­low­ing a good amount of crit­i­cal acclaim. And now I am here to warn you away from mak­ing the same mistake.

It’s not that this is a bad set, it’s just not notably good by any mea­sure. The First, Sec­ond and Sev­enth Sym­phonies are quite fine, with sharp rhythms and excel­lent shape. The Vienna Phil­har­monic plays with expected refine­ment, with an ele­gant string vibrato that no other orches­tra can match. But noth­ing else is any­thing more than ano­dyne, and Thiele­mann seems not to under­stand a lot of the music. He delib­er­ates his way through so much of the first move­ment of the ‘Eroica’ that there is no build-up of ten­sion, and when the famous dis­so­nant chords arrive, the effect is irri­tat­ing when it should be wrench­ing. The same is true of the Fifth, which should build both ten­sion and emo­tional com­mit­ment all the way to the open­ing of the final move­ment, and where under this con­duc­tor the music moves along with­out any par­tic­u­lar point. The Ninth is okay, but noth­ing more. The DVD, which is a doc­u­men­tary about the project, should in no case be seen first, as it implies the music-making has some impor­tant new things to say.

The set does have a lot to say about the busi­ness of clas­si­cal music. Thielemann’s rel­a­tive star­dom is a mys­tery to me. He seems com­pe­tent but with noth­ing to say, the shame is that he comes out of a tra­di­tion of musi­cians like Gün­ter Wand who were not only com­pe­tent but had a great deal to say about the mean­ing of the music they led. But some com­bi­na­tion of agents and record com­pa­nies have decided the world needs doc­u­ments of Thielemann’s pleas­ant and for­get­table per­for­mances, so they put a sticker on the box call­ing it “The Beethoven Cycle of the 21st Cen­tury.” That’s true, because the results are bland, and 21st Cen­tury cor­po­rate con­sumer cul­ture seeks to both nar­co­tize us with and addict us to blandness.

Mean­while, the San Fran­cisco Sym­phony, the Lon­don Sym­phony, the New York Phil­har­monic and oth­ers, with supe­rior con­duc­tors, shunned by the record com­pa­nies, have gone their own way, and are cre­at­ing a mem­o­rable and often impor­tant body of work. I won­der what exec­u­tives have decided Thiele­mann is a star, and, when the sales don’t pan out, if that per­son will lose their job. But, of course they won’t, they’ll be promoted.

If for some rea­son you’re a fan of this con­duc­tor, then you will buy and enjoy this and noth­ing I have to say will dis­suade you. If you’re look­ing for a good set of the Beethoven Sym­phonies, there are bet­ter ones that cost less. The Vän­skä and Haitink sets are recent vin­tage, have great play­ing, sen­si­ble think­ing and excel­lent sound. There are many good period instru­ment sets, I like the one from Anima Eterna the best, but Hogwoods’s is good, Norrington’s still holds up and you may find Gar­diner more com­pan­ion­able than I do. On many days, the old school ones are the best, includ­ing Karajan’s first two cycles, Bernstein’s, the ter­rific and little-known one from Andre Cluytens and, if you can find it, the record­ings from George Szell and the Cleve­land Sym­phony, which are just great.