Search - Beethoven, Toscanini, NBC :: Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 8/Leonore Overture No3

Pristine Sound Quality of Intense Beethoven Readings

12/05/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The live Carnegie Hall 1952 telecast of the Beethoven Fifth nearly equals the polish of the earlier 1939 reading (Vol. 25 in the BMG Toscanini Collection) or the dramatic intensity of the live 1933 PSNY performance (available on Pearl in a commemorative set of New York Philharmonic performances, as well as in the Naxos Toscanini Concert Edition on 8.110801.) One notes that there is a slight editing error in this as well as all earlier editions, and the newest Red Seal release, around 6:49 elapsed time in the first movement, where an "insert" (from the dress rehearsal tapes) is pitched slightly off from the live performance tapes. The sound is crisp and clear, though the mike placement is very close and there is scarcely more ambience than in most of Toscanini's Studio 8H broadcasts. The Beethoven Eighth commercial session fails to equal the perfect pacing and expression in the preceding live broadcast: here, Toscanini is more aggressive and clipped, and the naturalness of pacing and phrasing is replaced with a more contrived "canned" interpretation. This reading is NOT for the faint-hearted: Furtwaengler, Walter, or Beecham fans, for example, will find it unpleasantly forceful and hyper. The sound is just as tight and focused as the performance; the live broadcast was better balanced and more spacious, though a terrible "clam" by trumpeter Harry Glantz in the finale has probably kept the recording from being released in any widely-distributed LP or CD format.Despite its flaws, this edition is to be preferred to the later fake stereo RCA Red Seal "20-bit" version, which falsifies the sound with echo."