Classical music recordings upgrade

Many of my favorite recorded performances of Beethoven’s symphonies are by conductors who never recorded the whole cycle.

I’ll limit myself to mentioning only one: Carlos Kleiber. His recordings of the 5th & 7th symphonies, Vienna Philharmonic (DGG), are stupendous. He recorded the 4th live with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra (Orfeo, may be hard to find) and it is also a trully great performance.

The Solti/Chicago (I do agree that the London LPs sound better than the CDs) and Karajan/Berlin (the cycle from the 70s, DGG) are, for me, the most satisfying “complete” modern cycles. Conductor, Wilhem Furtwangler (with various orchestras), is one of my favorites of the “old guard” for his personal and unique way with these works, but you'll have to settle for (sometimes) less-than satisfactory sound reproduction. Really a small price to pay for what you receive emotionally.

An interesting, and totally outrageous view of the symphonies by Roger Norrington (Angel) was recorded during the musicologically-correct epoch of the 1980s & 90s, when cats ran for their lives to avoid having their digestive plumbing used for violin strings. I still own it on LPs—it was issued also on CDs—and merits a hearing now-and-then for the panache and lack of religious reverence that, many times, afflicts performances of these works.

There are even complete cycles by “pianists” (the Liszt transcriptions). A recording of the 5th symphony by Glenn Gould is quite good.

Anyway, good luck with your search and best wishes.

Gabbro, are you refering to Bernstein’s CBS, New York Phil. cycle or the one on DGG with the Vienna Phil.?

It's a shame that the intensity of many of Bernstein's NY performances were sabotaged by the incredibly crappy-sounding productions. Was someone really listening in the control booth?

It has always baffled me that the artists themselves were not equally horrified by the sound of their LPs. Or, were they, and no one at the label listened to them?