Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surprising Ninth., 27 Jun 2003
The nineties saw the appearance, especially from the EMI stables, of a group of recordings taken live at actual concerts conducted by Otto Klemperer and authorised for release by his estate, some of them taped perhaps too late in his career but very interesting to compare with studio efforts. Live Klemperer recordings have been indeed uncommon, since the conductor was able to studio-record the vast majority of the repertoire that made him famous, a susprising quantity of it in stereo in view of Klemperer's long life span (he lived close to 90). The late fifties saw the recording and release of the conductor's famous HMV stereo set of the Beethoven 9 symphonies, never out of the catalogue since then. I don't know why this recording of Beethoven's Op. 125, taken at a RFH concert in November 1957 was made or if it was ever meant to be released to the general public when EMI put it on tape, but collectors must for ever thank Testament for making it available. If you're acquainted with the Klemperer style mostly from the EMI studio recordings made from the late '50s onwards, you're in for a big, big susprise. On the outside, this live ninth is not strikingly different from the studio recording, made less than a month later with the same participants and available also from EMI in a single disc or as part of the complete 9 symphonies set. But how different it sounds! There's a tense, thrilling atmosphere throughout that is far less present in the studio, as Klemperer --like most of the conductors of his generation, one that comprised monsters of the art like Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler or Erich Kleiber-- could be radically different in a concert hall, before an audience, than in the studio, and this recording does show it all-round. Besides, in 1957 he clearly still had a strength or power of expression that a few years later, save for a few exceptions, age signifficantly dilluted and replaced with idiosyncracies that tended to mar a number of those recordings he made during the last 5 or 6 years of his life (a significant example of this lies in his Bruckner 8th). This ninth is exhuberant with life, joy and dramatic tension, everything fits readily into place and some of the tempi may even susprise listeners more used to Klemperer's famous slowness, here apparent mostly in the scherzo, a slowness that many US record reviewers liked so much to criticise as "pedantic" during the conductor's last years. So, in spite of an over-emphatic timpanist and Hotter's tendency to wobble and miss a few notes in the last movement, this a "Choral Symphony" to place among the very greatest ever put on disc. The sound is very good and clear (stereo, most unusual for a live recording dating from 1957), the conductor's usual orchestral layout a definite plus and Klemperer's legendary exigence of clarity of intonation and articulation very well followed by a Philharmonia Orchestra that at the time was one of the world's greatest orchestras. A must then, and if Testament can dig out similar Klemperer material from record company vaults, may they be blessed for ever!
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The very best Choral recording ever!, 2 Jan 2004
I heard this on BBC Radio 3 today - January 2nd 2004 - and was totally stupified. Even before I discovered who was conducting it I thought it easily the best performance of the Choral that I have ever heard, and I've heard dozens, perhaps hundreds in the past 50 years. Then we were told it was Klemperer. Of course! Who else could it have been? Everything about this performance is just perfect, and the sheer raw power of the orchestral playing and the singing moved me to tears - and I was sitting in my parked car at the time! Sensational. Five stars? Make that ten.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Klemperer's inspiration, 4 Jul 2007
This extraordinary document gives you more than a hint of why Klemperer came to be so revered by the concert going public in London. Recorded at a concert in 1957, this was the first outing of the newly formed Philharmonia Chorus and the culmination of Dr Klemperer's first London Beethoven cycle at the Royal Festival Hall. Klemperer's totally uncompromising view of this symphony is so convincing in this performance : as ever to refuses to indulge in sentimentality and gives you the music raw and untainted. There's a feeling of unremitting, elemental power in the first two movements, the home key of D minor hammering home at every opportunity. The Scherzo is deliberate but never loses momentum, the woodwind sounding almost terrifiying in their stark prominence (a Klemperer trademark).
In the slow movement the clouds begin to break and the sun peaks through. Klemperer relaxes in the great Adagio, and the orchestra respond with lofty and noble playing. Its a spritual moment, a transition from the chaos and cacophony of the first two movements. In the transition into the last movement with Chorus, the great Hans Hotter is a bit rough in his declamation of 'Oh Freunde' but you're left in no doubt as to the message. The Philharmonia Chorus's contribition is notable, superbly nuanced and disciplined singing, blending in like intruments of the orchestra. The applause at the end of the concert is a very sincere response to what must have been some concert. Thank heavens we have it on CD now!
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~ Hans Hotter
~ Ludwig van Beethoven
~ Berliner Philharmoniker
~ Gustav Mahler
~ Giacomo Puccini
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