Orfeo C600 031B, 38:46 (Distrib. Qualiton) ***:
Something special by way of the late conductor Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004), namely, his only known rendition of the Beethoven Sixth Symphony (7 November 1983), preserved not so much by means of the Bavarian State Orchestra tape archive–whose official transfer had deteriorated–as by an amateur cassette tape made at the time for Kleiber’s own son. Obedient to Beethoven’s original, brisk metronome markings–a policy followed by Scherchen and more recently by Zinman and Norrington–Kleiber achieves an extremely streamlined, athletic continuity through the performance. Always along the linear path of the music proceeds a wealth of string and woodwind detail that captures the floridity of Nature, the intoxication of pantheistic rapture. The 12/8 Andante luxuriates in varied interplay between flute, oboe, horn, bassoon, and strings, a veritable serenade of transparent vitality and spontaneous freshness.
Carlos Kleiber projected his own musical aura, the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli of the conducting world, aloof, mercurial, thoroughly answering no other call than his conscience and–as Karajan put it–his empty refrigerator. An extremely selective discography exists, one that collectors remain on the alert to expand via live broadcasts; and so, this rarity fulfills several missions. The countrified Peasant Dance third movement relishes its bleats and drones, the quaintness of the bassoon part and the Brueghelian pomp of the tutti. The tempo accelerates directly into the Thunderstorm movement, the tremolandi in the lower strings as palpable as any electricity in the sky.
Berlioz had written that the movement produces vertigo, and the listener cannot distinguish whether he feels pleasure or pain. From the swirls and rubble of the storm emerge the deepest grumblings from the bass fiddles and the plaintive, lulling Hymn, the Shepherds’ Song. The hymn gives way to the spirit of the dance, a buoyant almost elfin patina under girded by a plenum of irradiated colors. Music critic Karl-Robert Danler commented that “the composer cannot possibly have intended things differently.” After a most prolonged hesitation–doubtless caught in the web of enchantment–the audience breaks out into applause that lasts four minutes on this all-too-brief disc.
— Gary Lemco
