Beethoven Extended

At the heart of the project lies the double orchestra, a configuration Laurence Equilbey first explored in December 2018, when she brought together the musicians of Insula orchestra and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin for the Fifth Symphony — an experience repeated a few years later with the Ninth.

Historically authenticated from Beethoven’s own time, this arrangement consists of doubling the orchestral forces in the tutti passages — including the strings — so as to amplify the contrasts in a natural way. Numerous scores annotated by Beethoven himself confirm that this practice was intended for large concert halls. The chamber-music passages gain in refinement and relief, while the great orchestral waves of sound acquire a gripping intensity and monumentality. This search for the right balance between density, power and transparency lies at the core of Laurence Equilbey’s vision as a performer, just as it was central to the orchestral practices that emerged during the Romantic era.

First performed in December 1808 at the Theater an der Wien with around fifty musicians, the Fifth Symphony was played thirteen years later in Cologne, at the fourth Festival of the Lower Rhine, by a full 158 performers. Far from being an accident of history or a betrayal of the composer’s intentions, this massive increase in forces reveals an essential dimension of Beethoven’s orchestral writing.

As the Napoleonic Wars drew to a close, Germany saw the birth of large-scale orchestral festivals — from the first at Frankenhausen in June 1810 to the Niederrheinisches Musikfest in Cologne — gathering between 100 and 200 musicians. Between 1810 and 1847, fifty-one of seventy-eight festivals programmed at least one Beethoven symphony, the Fifth being performed an unrivalled seventeen times. To manage such forces, the double orchestra evolved, divided between solo and ripieno: the solo players took the delicate passages and the piano nuances, while the reinforcing desks joined in the tuttis, the active forces growing gradually from pianissimo to fortissimo. Applied to the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, these practices illuminate the orchestral drama of living scores, able to flourish in a multiplicity of configurations without ever losing their cohesion.

After the essay by Alexis Longefay for the album booklet.

Having celebrated its tenth anniversary, Insula orchestra wished to open a new chapter directed towards passing on its knowledge. So it was that, in 2025, Insula camerata was born — a vocational academy on period instruments aimed at young artists fresh from the conservatoires. For this first edition, spanning the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 seasons, 32 instrumentalists aged between 18 and 30 were selected by a distinguished international jury, during auditions held in Paris, Brussels, Geneva and New York.

The model is a new one: in symphonic programmes for double orchestra, the young academicians play alongside the musicians of Insula orchestra and benefit from their mentorship. Through concerts, recording sessions, tours and cultural mediation, the academy offers a 360-degree immersion in the life of an orchestra.

Beethoven Extended gives rise to a series of recordings for harmonia mundi that reveal the variety of Beethoven’s writing and the radical nature of his development: first the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, then the Third and Sixth, and finally the Ninth. The project will also involve an audio-visual production for Medici / Mezzo and a 360-degree immersive version in the new Alcôv halls.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Insula orchestra & Insula camerata — Laurence Equilbey, conductor
harmonia mundi — HMM 902418

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
I. Allegro con brio (7’03) · II. Andante con moto (8’27) · III. Allegro – Trio (4’47) · IV. Allegro (10’21)

Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92
I. Poco sostenuto – Vivace (14’13) · II. Allegretto (8’18) · III. Presto (9’02) · IV. Allegro con brio (8’46)

Recorded: September 2025 (Symphony No. 5) and February 2026 (Symphony No. 7), Auditorium Patrick Devedjian, La Seine Musicale, Boulogne-Billancourt. Artistic direction, editing, mixing and mastering: Laure Casenave-Péré. Sound engineering: Vincent Mons, assisted by Étienne Rosset (No. 5) and Robin Rieuvernet (No. 7).

Discover the recording and the project’s concerts: