“I waited a very long time to record the Beethoven symphonies,” said Daniel Barenboim when this cycle was first released in 2000. “I waited for the music to mature in me – or me in it – and to find an orchestra that not only did what I asked it to do, but which really felt every detail in the music exactly as I did at the moment we were playing it … This is the greatest joy that a conductor can have.”