MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Support us financially by purchasing this from

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Symphony No.7 in A, Op.92 [35:00]
Symphony No.8 in F, Op.93 [24:06]
New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra/Bruno Walter
rec. 1951, 1948. ADD/mono
Reviewed as streamed in 24-bit sound
First released as Columbia ML4414
Download only
SONY G010004058262O [59:08]

Some time ago, I rashly promised to write an article on the recent Sony Bruno Walter – The Complete Columbia Collection (19075923242, 77 CDs) and the single download offshoots from it. I’m still working on it, but I thought it might be worthwhile to review some of the plums from the set separately. Jack Horner in the nursery rhyme put in his thumb and pulled out a plum; that’s thought to be a reference to an actual historical event – at the dissolution of the monasteries, Thomas Horner sent his bid for a rich mansion that had belonged to the abbot of Glastonbury, a ‘plum’ acquisition, in secret, sealed in an empty pie case, and got the prize.

I shudder at the thought of where I would put such the complete collection – and at the thought of laying out over £200 for a set which includes many recordings which I already own – but for Mahler enthusiasts there’s a slightly less daunting prospect in the form of another Sony set which remains available as a download for around £50 in lossless sound: Bruno Walter conducts Mahler (Classical Masters 88691920102).

If the complete set is the covering pie – rather a bulky pie if your house is already crammed with CDs, DVDs and blu-rays – this Beethoven recording is one of the plums. As a naturally sedentary – too sedentary – person, there’s not much that gets me wanting to move about in time with the music. David Munrow’s Renaissance Dance 2-CD collection, still available at super-budget price (Erato Veritas 3500032) is one; Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is another, and the Walter recording is guaranteed to do it.

I’ll start by admitting the downside of the separate downloads. They certainly save on shelf space and avoid duplication, but, at around £11.50 each in lossless format, you would end up paying more than the £200 of the 77-CD set before you were a third of the way through downloading its contents. I advise against economising by choosing transfers on labels other than Sony; these may have been made without much care and may not deliver what it says on the box: ‘Beethoven: The 9 Symphonies’ for £8.49 in full 320 kb/s mp3 looks like good value for the NYPO set, but actually contains only Nos. 1-8! Someone can’t count – perhaps a descendant of the music student who assured his professor that Beethoven wrote three symphonies, the ‘Eroica’, the Fifth and the ‘Choral’.

The Seventh may not have been one of the student’s three, but Walter’s New York recording is a classic, an example of how to live dangerously and get away with it. Throughout the work Walter is fully in tune with this ‘apotheosis of the dance’, but it’s the really fast tempo for the finale that makes it so special – a train crash that miraculously never happens. It was only his special rapport with the NYPO that made that possible – he didn’t dare to do it in the Columbia SO remake – although that’s less than 30 seconds slower, it sounds altogether more sedate. Along with his Columbia SO late Mozart symphonies (CDs 62-64 of the complete set, or G0100040942846, download only), this is my special pick of these recordings.

I don’t want to get too involved in comparisons with a classic recording of this vintage, but it’s impossible to put a recording of the Seventh into context without a glance in the direction of Carlos Kleiber’s 1976 account with the Vienna Philharmonic (DG Originals 4474002, with an equally classic No.5; No.7 also included in DG Beethoven 2020: Symphonies and Overtures review ). The DG stereo sound is obviously superior to that of a recording from the very earliest days of mono LP – there’s even an SACD (E4716302) and both the CD and lossless download are less expensive than the Sony – but the Sony transfer is more than acceptable. I owned the Philips LP of the two Walter performances (GBL5619), and, from memory, the sound is now very considerably improved on that.

The Kleiber coupling undoubtedly deserves all the praise that has been lavished on it, but Walter scores in the outer movements with a slightly greater sense of energy, and not least in the finale. We easily forget that the Seventh and Eighth symphonies were composed only slightly earlier than the late quartets. The opening movement of No.7 offers a premonition of that late quartet style, with phrases arching upwards only to be dismissed as leading nowhere, so that it’s easy to imagine the surreal scenario of Wagner dancing on top of the piano to explain the music to Liszt.

Walter’s may not be quite the fastest account of the finale, but it is faster even than most chamber orchestra or period instrument versions, and it remains for me the most convincing. Surprisingly, one of the few other conductors to bring the movement off at a similar speed is Otto Klemperer, with the Philharmonia in 1955 (Warner 5678512, download only, or Naxos 8.111248, both with No.5). Klemperer is a little lumpen elsewhere, and he opens the finale a little more deliberately than Walter, but the movement never drags, belying the automatic assumption that Klemperer is going to make the dance sound elephantine. Whether attributable to the superb rapport that he had with the Philharmonia, or the advances made in recording quality in the short time between the two recordings, all the strands of the music stand out more clearly in his recording, originally released on UK Columbia 33CX1379.

That Klemperer 7 is coupled with a classic Fifth, fast enough to have been released on a 10” LP; it’s one of the treasures of the repertoire of the conductor whose recordings were usually regarded as complementary to Walter’s. You were supposed to prefer one’s Beethoven or Mahler to the other’s; now, with hindsight, we see them not as rivals but as different sides of the same Austro-German tradition. You’ll see if you look at Christopher Howell’s review of the Klemperer, that I rate his Beethoven much more highly than my colleague.

No.8 follows a shade too hard on the heels of No.7, but that’s my only reservation. Walter refuses to treat it as the poor relative of its predecessor, yet avoids making it sound too self-important. If Beethoven had a fault, it’s that some of this music can easily be made to sound pompous. Walter’s Beethoven in general avoids that, and nowhere more than in these two symphonies.

If I had to choose just one Beethoven recording for my Desert Island, I’d be hard pressed to choose between the VPO/Kleiber 5 and 7 and these two NYPO/Walter recordings.

Why did Walter’s Columbia Symphony Orchestra remake not quite catch fire in the same way? It’s also included in the complete set, in a smaller 7-CD collection of Walter’s Columbia SO Beethoven (88875123912), and available separately as a download, with the same coupling of Nos. 7 and 8. The (stereo) recording quality is better, but the playing never quite gels as the New York recording did.

The Columbia SO consisted of hand-picked players, but they performed together only on record, and Walter never seems to have developed the rapport with them that he had with the NYPO. Additionally, his health had deteriorated in the meantime, and that seems to have had an effect on his physical presence, as seems also to have happened in the case of Klemperer. Ralph Moore summed up the Sony complete set of these Walter stereo recordings very fairly in his review. Some dealers still have copies of that set; otherwise, it’s download only.

With mono recordings of this vintage, there’s little to be lost by choosing mp3. I compared the sound as streamed in 24/192 hi-res with the mp3 streamed from Naxos Music Library, and there’s very little difference – it’s tolerable in both formats. Even the mp3 download is not inexpensive, but, at around £8, it represents a saving over lossless. Some dealers offer a BnF transcription of these two recordings for around £4 in mp3 and around £6 in lossless sound; it even comes with a very rudimentary pdf booklet. The sound is noticeably thinner than the Sony transfer, so I don’t recommend economising.

Unless you are in the market for the complete 77-CD Bruno Walter collection, this is one of the most worthwhile individual downloads from it.

Brian Wilson



Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing