Beethoven Otto Klemperer

Otto Klemperer's Beethoven is one of the towering achievements in the history of recordings. By today's standards, these performances are hopelessly old-fashioned: dark, heavy, and frequently very slow. But they are also the grandest, most unsentimental, most purposeful versions in the catalog.

The Philharmonia Orchestra was in superb form in the autumn of 1957 when the opportunity came for it to perform all nine Beethoven symphonies, plus the five piano concertos, in a series of 10 concerts at London's Royal Festival Hall under the baton of Otto Klemperer. Credit for that certainly should go to Herbert von Karajan, who had been the orchestra's principal conductor since its founding a decade earlier, and had recently been tapped by the Berlin Philharmonic as its conductor for life.

With no slight intended to the other great recordings of the Missa Solemnis in the world, there's this one and then there are all the rest. Truly. Even with the 1940 Toscanini and the 1974 Böhm, this 1965 recording of Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus embodies everything that's great about the Missa Solemnis.

By the time he made these celebrated recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra in the early 1960s, Otto Klemperer was a grand old man of conducting. Christa Ludwig, by contrast, was in the glowing early prime of her extraordinary career, which encompassed repertoire for both mezzo-soprano and soprano. “Klemperer was marvellous for the singing,” she later said, “because he did nothing against the composer.” This collection shows the fruits of their collaboration in Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms and Mahler.

It was often told from the past that the Recording with the Concept Hebows Vascular Orchestra is the ability to listen to the highest level of performances without taking into account for sound quality. However, in fact, there is a problem with the physical specs that are unique to old live recording and broadcast recording, and it is not often offered by other enthusiasts and when it comes to cleanperer, it has been widely heard as a representative masterpiece of plays that commanded the Philharmonia Strings Orchestra. While the fun of the magnified information that can be heard in studio recordings is unmatched, the Clampeller's music was originally more lively and powerful, with long time conducted in theaters and concert halls.

Guiomar Novaes was one of the greatest Brazilian pianists but I didn't know that when I bought this two-disc set. What originally attracted me to this collection was the conductor, not the soloist, leading the three Piano Concertos, Otto Klemperer. Indeed, the Beethoven 4th, Chopin 2nd and Schumann are performed well with the Vienna Symphony, in good sound from the 1950s, but it is the various solo pieces that are the true highlight of this set, and showcase the real magic of Novaes' playing.