The Most Extraordinary Recording of Beethoven 9

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Truly extraordinary, but far from perfect. No recording is perfect. But this is the recording, for all its bizarre touches, which comes closest to my own conception. But the fact that I prefer this recording to just about all others troubles me very deeply. It comes from Nazi-era Netherlands, and the one quality, the only important quality, which this recording lacks is perhaps the most important quality of all - that final humanist glow which makes the 9th feel like a statement of love rather than coercion. I have no idea if the politics of a performance matter matter, there are Nazi-era recordings which have that glow in spades (for one, Furtwangler's famous 1942 performance of the Ninth, a conductor with far more conflicted feelings about the Nazi party than Mengelberg). The first three movements are beyond compare, and so is the last movement, but the tone of the performance is so utterly regimented, so commanding and dynamic, that it feels like a Beethoven 9 for Nuremberg, not humanity. 

The Barenboim Enigma

When Barenboim is at his best, he comes across as exactly what he is, the world's most talented performing musician. No conductor, save Furtwangler and maybe Eugen Jochum could make the climax to Bruckner's fifth symphony so exciting. Unfortunately, being the world's greatest musician was never enough for him. Barenboim clearly wants nothing less than to be the Emperor of Classical Music. What amazes is how close he's come to this dream when he so often gives such erratic results. Why would Barenboim want anything more than the Berlin Staatskapelle, the East-West Divan and to give piano recitals? Those alone would be enough to write his page in music history, and it probably be a far more effective way to write it than turning up at La Scala and the Berlin/Vienna Philharmonics every other month. Nothing poisons musicianship like coveting big jobs for which you're not cut out. But this performance, like so much else he does with the underrated Staatskapelle Berlin, is 100x more exciting than anything he did in Chicago.


(ah hell, here's the Furtwangler version of Bruckner 5 from the exact same point. Furtwangler never gave a more exciting performance than this, and perhaps nobody else did either.)