Naxos Historical 8.111248 73:42 (Not distributed in the U.S.) *****:
For many collectors, the 1955 association of Otto Klemperer (1885-1973) with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London marks something special in music making, and their recordings of the Beethoven Eroica, Fifth, and Seventh symphonies particularly happy results of their collaboration. Naxos and its veteran producer Mark Obert-Thorn have restored the mono sessions from 5-7 October and 17 December 1955 of the Beethoven Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, with their especial ambiance and emotional power.
Critics often note that form and architecture were more primary to Klemperer’s aesthetic than emotional feeling, but I recall pianist Leon Fleisher’s comment on Klemperer, recalling their collaboration on the Beethoven G Major Concerto: “There was with Klemperer always a sense of the transcendent.” The Philharmonia strings, winds and tympani certainly do not stint on aggressive dynamism and lyricism in their parts, as even the often subdued tympanic beats in the Andante con moto of the Fifth Symphony urge our attention. The large body of strings, separated across the stage to provide a balanced sound augmented by the nice attention to woodwind details, produces a vast canvas, driven and eminently clear of texture. The tympani part takes us virtually unaided across the last bars of the Scherzo–Allegro to the Herculean onrush of the Finale, a mountain of sound. Expansive in concept, the Fifth runs long at 35 minutes, but the scale and sweep of the tempo keeps us in thrall. Listen to the trumpet entries over the rapid figures in the bass parts, the winds high, the tympani rumbling enough to wake the Nibelungen! Perhaps only Kleiber in his Concertgebouw version achieves more of an emotional catharsis in a classic reading; but Klemperer, who favors the repeat in the final Allegro, loses not a shred of momentum in the unfolding of the unloosing of the four-note kernel’s atomic power.
Klemperer’s was the first Beethoven Seventh I ever heard on LP, so this Naxos restoration invokes precious memories fro me. Slicing, pungent string and wind attacks open the score, the basses prominent, the tympani omnipresent. Klemperer’s singing line, the strings‚ trills, the ostinati in the winds, all contribute to a massive Poco sustention before the rhythmic saturnalia that follows. In addition to the motor energies Klemperer musters, his is no less a thick, meaty texture, as much of girth as animal forward motion. The Allegretto, Beethoven’s most tragic music, elicits a high dignity as well as warmly layered series of valedictions. Even the fugato sings transparently. Lovely flute work juxtaposed with the kettledrum and plucked strings.
Curiously, the Presto has a marcato, deliberate, even monolithic character at odds with the symphony’s otherwise rustic, Dionysian revelry. The secondary theme with flute balances above the ether like Botticelli’s sylphs. Still pesant and martial, the last movement Allegro con brio becomes more a testament of will than a call to spiritual abandon. For sheer beauty of execution, however, one would have to liken Klemperer’s rousing moments to those of Beecham with his own Royal Philharmonic. Not unbuttoned but hardly staid, the Klemperer Seventh shudders in its own inevitability, a document of Beethoven’s inner volition, much of which rubbed off on his dutiful servant Klemperer.
— Gary Lemco
