Beethoven: Quartet, Op. 135 - Symphony No. 9

Album review

Three months after Arturo Toscanini led the BBC Symphony & Chorus in a terrifying performance of Beethoven's Ninth, he led his own NBC Symphony in an equally terrifying performance of the same work on February 6, 1938. But while the BBC played the Ninth with the fresh terror of an orchestra performing under the maestro furioso for the first time, Toscanini hand-picked the musicians of the NBC Symphony himself and they respond to his stick with fearful supplication and cringing terror. Toscanini's interpretation of the Ninth is his standard "Moses come down from the mountain" interpretation, a wild-eyed prophet more than willing to smite the unbelievers. The NBC, used to Toscanini, cowers before him, bows trembling, lips shaking, breath coming in short gasps as the musicians try to please the Old Man. Alas, to no avail, because for the first three movements the NBC quivers beneath Toscanini's driven tempos and clipped rhythms, trying to keep up with his always-accelerating baton. Only at the entrance of the immense and powerful voice of Ezio Pinza in the Finale does Toscanini briefly back off. But when the NBC Chorus enters a few minutes later, Toscanini once again starts bullying the tempos and he never relents straight through to the Prestississimo final bars. The sound of Graham Newton's 2004 technical reconstruction is the clearest, the warmest, and the best Toscanini's February 1938 Ninth has ever had.
© TiVo