Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 "Choral"

A wonderful recording! As regards the technical issues I think it equals the best of recordings. The sound is intense, dynamic, you really hear the symphonic sound - the different characters of the instruments. Musically is it intense, architectural, titanic in strength and power. Build up from the misty chords opening the symphony to the concluding manic happiness, hope and joy in the last movement. Conductor Fricsay really created music created by the great Beethoven. Fischer-Dieskau is fantastic in his opening of the vocal part in the last movement. The only complain I can have is the bit strained voice of Irmgard Seefried on certain top-notes. - This is a VERY great recording!

While many people hail Karajan and his Berlin Philharmonic forces with interpreting the best Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, I am not alone in stating that conductor Ferenc Frisay, who died of cancer in the early 60's, was a genuine rival and could have even surpassed Karajan. His version of the Ninth is absolutely brilliant. The tempi is conducted at a compelling pace, not too fast or too slow, though Fricsay has conducted in usually swift fashion. The miraculous exactitude of the strings falling and raising can be heard over this remastered disc. The opening Allegro movement is powerful, visceral and majestic. The Scherzo is played in the finest way I've ever heard. The slow, spiritual and romantic Andante Cantabile is heartbreaking and tender, Fricsay conducting at his finest. This long sigh is delivered with touching pathos by the Berlin forces. The Finale, with its famous use of chorus "Ode to Joy" is joyous itself. The cast here includes celebrated singers like the unsurpassed baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau (in young 1958 voice) and the mezzo soprano Maureen Forrester sounds ravishing. This was the first LP on Stereo of Beethoven's 9th and thus is a collector's item as well. Fans of Fricsay will want to own this recording, and it does indeed rival Karajan's version. If I were to recommend three great Beethoven 9th recordings I would say: Fricsay, Karajan and Solti's versions.

If one must rank recordings (and most of us do), I hold this one in the highest esteem and echo the accolades of the earlier reviewers. I think that, for me, this is the best recorded performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, given 50 years of listening to and studying this score. Everything works; all come together to create a unique univeerse of sound. Even the solo quartet are spot on, including the young Fischer-Dieskau, who sings lusciously smoothly and has not yet started to bark. Of course there are rivals, among which are Jochum and the Concertgebouw on Philps and his later recording with the London Symphony (very rare and hard to find) and Kubelik and the two recordings he made with his Bavarian orchestra (DG and Orfeo). And Szell's crystal clear reading with the Cleveland. And, not often mentioned, Monteux with the London Symphony and Schmidt-Isserstedt with the Vienna Philharmonic. But no matter how one ranks or doesn't rank performances of this or any Beethoven symphony, this one is among the best and not to be missed. The sound is superb, by the way, and to my ears better than many later DG recordings. As an unusual added bonus, at the beginning of the CD Fricsay leads the Berlin Philharmonic through a reading of the Overture to Egmont that takes the breath away. And then he tops that with this magnificent performance of the Ninth.

I cannot but wholeheartedly share my colleagues' enthusiasm for this recording. I grew up with it (and, in fact still own the original 2-LP red album shown in this CD's cover, numbered by DGG -yes, back then they had an extra "D" in their name- as 138002/3 SLPM, one of their very first essays in the then novel stereophonic technology) and it still remains very close to me. Besides the 9th Symphony and the Egmont Overture presented in this reissue, the original release included an excellent rendition of the Leonora Overture No. 3, left out now (I suppose) so that a second CD would not be needed. The CD's higher transfer volume helps in bringing the sound closer to the listener (DGG apparently having decided to play it safe when their engineers cut the LPs' masters in 1958) and conferring to it an immediacy and transparency new to me whilst preserving its beautiful tone.

There's not much I can add to what has been written by others in this site, apart perhaps that by 1957 the Berlin Philharmonic still was very much, staff-wise, what it was under Furtwangler and it shows in this recording's sonority. After all, the grand old man had died scarcely 3 years before these works were put into tape, Karajan had just taken over the orchestra as chief conductor and the lean, muscular and to-the-point sound that became characteristic under his long regime was still two or three years into the future. Karajan took to rotate the orchestra's musicians fairly often, far more often actually than was customary with his predecessors and the results of the first shake-up became apparent when in 1962 the same company presented the first of Karajan's three Beethoven symphony cycles he'd record with them, when the orchestra's new virtuosity surprised critics the world over (Karajan had in his record a prior Beethoven symphony cycle, made for EMI during the fifties with the Philharmonia Orchestra). But what we get here, and in fine early stereophony, is the grand old sonority of the orchestra, the one that still had links to the pre-war years but which soon enough would evolve into an instrument capable of aweing its audiences under their new and starry conductor on account of its virtuosity and perfection.

But Fricsay's interpretations differ greatly from Furtwangler's. There is a tautness of approach, a more modern focusing on architecture that does not look back in time as much of Furtwängler's work did (but splendidly so, I must add), embedded as it was on german romanticism, but decidedly centres in our own time. Fricsay's approach to the Symphony's 4th movement is as modern as the late fifties allowed to, marking a singular kind-of-extrapolated cue to today's "historically aware" presentations, and DGG feted him with an outstanding quartet of vocal soloists. Yes, the 3rd movement is slow, perhaps harking back to the grand old man's ways but Fricsay gave us lessons of tempo handling in the first and second movements that have nothing to do with Furtwangler's fluctuations, an approach decidedly his, full of musicianship and with a solid grasp of the beethovenian language. So it is also in the performance of the Egmont Overture which fortunately made its way to the disc.

Yes, cancer robbed us of an immensely talented conductor who probably would have rivalled Karajan (who was but a few years his senior) during much of the second half of the 20th Century. What would have become of Fricsay's career is anybody's guess, as is the case with other conductors (like Cantelli, for example) whose careers were cut short by untimely death, but mind you, if you decide to buy this disc you will end up with one of the finer recordings this warhorse has had ever.

The sound is unique. If not for The ninth conducted by Furtwangler in 1942 this would be the greatest performance in every age.
Anyway it's amust for you to buy it. Don't miss tis essential document.