Wiener Symphoniker, Jascha Horenstein - Beethoven: Symphonie Nr.9 'Choral' (2011) [Hi-Res]

"This record has already appeared in America and I hope our correspondent there won't mind my tilting at his view that it is a "good but not exactly memorable performance". For me, any performance that makes the last movement a thrilling climax to the whole work is indeed memorable, and how often does that happen, at a concert or on a record? (When it does happen at a concert I am unable to enjoy it, for I am constantly on tenterhooks, afraid that we shall be let down!) Here there is no doubt about it: this is the most telling Finale you will find on any record at present available. Toscanini's certainly wasn't a success: the singing was harddriven and not always adequate, and the recording of the voices was poor. The chorus in Furtwängler's deeply-felt Bayreuth performance is ineffectively recorded. The same fault is evident in the most recent issue, Karajan's on Columbia.

Horenstein has got his chorus to sing with magnificent conviction and Vox have recorded them very well. Their words are so vital and I can hear them so clearly that I want to know why they (and the bass soloist) sing "fresch" instead of "streng" in the sixth line of Schiller's poem. But there is no doubt about the effect of their singing. The jubilance of the word "Freude" at the start, the conviction of "Seid umschlungen, Millionen", making us feel that they really mean what they are singing about—that all men everywhere should embrace each other as brothers— the whole thing, in fact, has come to life for once.

The solo voices are not quite the equal of Furtwängler's quartet but they never let us down seriously and they very often lift us up. The orchestral playing through the whole work is in the first class.

True, the reading of the earlier movements is not so great as Toscanini's, not so "dedicated" as Furtwängler's, but it is not superficial. There are fine things, and one magnificent moment—at the second outburst for trumpets and horns in the slow movement, followed by deeply recorded basses in the quiet passage that ensues. The timpanist is always noticeably good but he is brilliant in the Scherzo. Horenstein's care for detail and balance is evident everywhere but it is in the Finale that he really comes into his own.

And all this is on one disc. In some of the heavier passages it does sound a little as if it had been a push to get it all in but when I balanced this with so many advantages I was not inclined to worry too much. And, something that had not occurred to me, the tiresomeness of having the flow of the slow movement interrupted by turning over the record in the middle was considerably off-set by not having to turn it over before the Finale—the great outburst almost breaks in upon the slow movement's end, as it should.

This brings an impressive performance within reach of a great many who might be unwilling to afford two discs and as such alone is to be welcomed. But I would recommend it to anybody's attention."