Just listened to: two appealing recordings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1824), mostly while lollygagging in Spring Creek Park in the late evening, both upon David Hurwitz’s recommendation:
- Ferenc Fricsay conducting Berliner Philharmoniker on Deutsche Gramophone (1959), and
- Osmo Vänskä conducting the Minnesota Orchestra on BIS (2006).
The latter is like in that episode Star Trek: The Next Generation where Data claims people say his violin playing is technically flawless but lacks soul. To describe the Vänskä exactly like that would be to overstate things—otherwise, I wouldn’t have liked the recording at all—but its primary appeals are its tightness of execution and the clarity and dynamic range of the recording itself. You’re basically hearing the sheet music in brilliant lucidity. With Beethoven, that’s not a bad thing.
The former is a volcanic ripsnorter of a performance whose only drawbacks are the audibility of recording hiss during the quiet parts and the inaudibility of the alto soloist admist her cohort.