Convincing, Well-Played, And Well-Recorded

My friend Sam (name changed to protect the innocent) called the other day. Sam is a brilliant and highly educated chap in his 40s. Everything he does he is at pains to do well, and he wants to do all the things com­mensurate with his place in life. He is versed in pop music, but recently he decided it was time to get into classical, and so bought himself a set of components that focused on a CD player. Naturally he buys only CDs, which practice, he admits, presently circumscribes his choices.

The subject of his call was the Beethoven symphonies. He had received as a Christmas present the Bernstein recordings, which he in­tended to exchange for the "best" version. A product of the '60s, he probably recalled that Bernstein wrote popular musicals and practiced "radical chic." I asked him what his standards for the symphonies were. He admitted that he didn't know them that well, whereupon I assured him that Bernstein would do just fine, and that later he would come to judge all other performances by Bernstein's.

At 14 I purchased my first recor­ding of a Beethoven symphony (the Fifth) with $8 of Christmas money. It was by Koussevitzky and the London Philharmonic, a version that Irving Kolodin later dismissed as ''arbitrary and unconvincing." I slipped on a patch of ice carrying it home, crack­ing the Scherzo, rim to center hole. Even with that persistent tick I im­mersed myself in it. I bought the old Goetschius piano score to follow it with (no Siggy Spaeth for me), and by June I could have, if forced, pro­bably whistled the whole work back to front.

Not many years later I became familiar with the Sixth through fre­quent pilgrimages to Disney's Fan­tasia, which I considered perhaps the greatest art work since Michelangelo's "Last Judgment." I recall being surprised, when I finally acquired a recording of that sym­phony (by Bruno Walter), that it was considerably longer than the version I had taken to heart. Also there were no satyrs and round-rumped cen­tauresses. With both symphonies I found that there were performances that satisfied more, and some that satisfied less, but I always saw their excellences and flaws against the abstract structures that those first im­pressions had implanted in my mind. (I was well past that impressionable stage when I came to know Beethoven's Second, and to this day have no clear mental image of it.)

The best version? Obviously the one closest to what the composer heard in his mind's ear, if we only knew what he heard. RCA raised a whole generation to believe that Toscanini knew--but Toscanini's readings displeased a good many. In the long run, what counts, unless you have a tin ear, is what you like. Of the 16 versions listed in a recent Schwann, I have seen reviews prais­ing 14. I (and several others) find the Solti set as convincing, as well­-played, and as well-recorded as the best of them.

Review of Sir Georg Solti Conducts The NINE SYMPHONIES pg 1