Complete Klemperer

Beethoven · Complete Symphonies · Staatskapelle Dresden · Colin Davis
APE+CUE 1.7 GB | MP3 HQ (Tracks) 703 MB | Booklet | EASY CD-DA 12 | No Log | RAR 3% Rec | 1995

"There has not been a Beethoven cycle like this since Klemperer's heyday, or Bruno Walter's", "The sound is glorious, full and forward and beautifully clear," Gramophone.

In 1962, Walter Legge invited Klemperer to make a recording of Bach's Mass in B minor for EMI. Although the Mass was a work that Klemperer was strongly drawn to, he nonetheless declined the offer. He was reluctant to conduct the work using the vast forces that were typically employed for performances as he believed it should be performed with numbers similar to those that Bach would have envisaged. Several years later he proposed a recording of the piece using "authentic" forces of a choir of 48 and under 50 instrumentalists - hence this recording.

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.