Anyone who would like to hear Otto Klemperer's legendary interpretations of Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonies should be aware that these remastered 1960 Vienna Festival performances from Music & Arts are no substitute for his classic EMI recordings, which have been hailed as landmarks and reissued numerous times. The sound engineers have done a decent job remastering these concert performances and cleaning up the tapes of unwanted hiss, but the limitations of live analog recording in the mid-20th century are still in evidence here. The sound overall is small, distant, and compressed, with an obvious loss of upper partials, and the Philharmonia seems squeezed into a box, with the thin upper strings' tone dominating and everybody else homogenized into a murky sonic mass below. Details are difficult to make out, and distinguishing the instruments requires a considerable boost of the volume. This is certainly a worthwhile set for scholarly purposes, and students interested in Klemperer's interpretations and tempos can still glean a lot from these performances. Klemperer's admirers may also wish to have this reissue as a complement to the EMI set, for the sake of comparing Klemperer's studio and live renditions. Even so, anyone seeking a basic set of the symphonies for first-time listening should try all-digital recordings before delving into this historical offering.
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