Walter H. Capps

The contents of the EMI box are too numerous to list but all the sonatas, variations, and most short pieces are here: absent is the London Sketchbook, which is trite juvenalia.

Bruno Walter was always a most persuasive advocate of the gentler Beethoven–at least, that's what everyone thought until his stereo Beethoven cycle was remastered onto CD, revealing a much stronger musical profile than had been suspected. But that just made the cycle's best performances sound better still–and here they are, together on one midpriced CD! It's amazing that a man in his 80s, as Walter was when these performances were recorded, could take what was essentially a pickup orchestra and turn in performances of such power and authority. Walter and the Columbia Symphony had a genuine chemistry between them–they play these two symphonies as if they had been making music together for years.

Walter, at the end of his career, set out to record his signature pieces for posterity in what was then the new technology of stereo. And unlike von Karajan, who rushed to record his repertoire at the dawn of the video and digital era to often-mixed results, every Walter performance is absolutely brilliant. This recording of Beethoven's 5th and 7th Symphonies, made over 4 days during the week of January 27 - February 3, 1958, is no exception.