Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7

 (162 customer reviews)

Carlos Kleiber has gone on record (sorry about the pun) as intensely disliking recordings, especially loathing the studio recording process, which he thinks, with justification in this poor writer's opinion, distorts and perverts the art of music making. This is the principal reason why the work of this notoriously mercurial and eccentric, but clearly genius-level world-class conductor is so regrettably underdocumented on recorded media, and why most all the recordings that do exist are of his live performances. Kleiber shares one characteristic with the late Leonard Bersnstein - he makes all music interesting. How many times has the average musician in the Vienna Philharmonic performed these two most popular of Beethoven's symphonies? As a symphonic musician myself, I would venture that most of them have long ago lost count. Each player has performed these symphonies scores, if not hundreds of times in his career - under the batons of conductors ranging from the memorable to...Read more

The Fifth is almost certainly the best ever recorded. I haven't heard every single recording, of course, but I've heard just about all of the most famous and frequently recommended ones, and this one is head and shoulders above the competition in my opinion. Kleiber is often thought of as a fast conductor, but he doesn't race the finale as many people do - he allows the triumphant theme to shine in all its majesty. The ending of the first movement had an electric effect on me when I first heard it - he takes no ritard whatsoever. I don't know whether the score calls for one, but I don't care - the unrelenting feeling he imparts to the music at that point is indescribably powerful. Be aware, however, that some people find this performance too angry or grim. Kleiber does not always savor the sheer beauty of the music, but if he had done so it might have slackened the spectacular urgency and exccitement of the performance.In the Seventh, Kleiber is still terrific, but...Read more

When Carlos Kleiber released his classic Beethoven Fifth in 1975 with the Vienna Phil., it made his reputation overnight, and the recording was greeted as a revelation. At the time I wondered if this was really true, since two older Fifths from the early Sixties, Karajan with the Berlin Phil. and Bernstein with the NY Phil., seemed quite wonderful already. Now I have the latest remastering of each, so I decided to sit down and compare them.

Sonics: The Kleiber recording was never one of DG's best--edgy, a bit thin, lacking in warmth. In its "Originals" reissue things are improved but not drastically so. However, neither Karajan nor Bernstein sounds appreciably better, the main difference being that these conductors asked for heavier weight in the lower part of te orchestra and were given wider stereo by the engineers. There is still some shrillness in the strings at loud volume on all three CDs. I would say that Karajan's latest SACD remastering gives him the edge. The...Read more