The wonderful writer Rafi Zabor has posted these Beethoven reviews on Amazon.

For Horenstein's Missa:
Elysium, June 1, 2005
By Joel Rafi Zabor (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews


For a long time one could lament the fact that there was no definitive performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis on record, and make do with the best elements of the recordings available: Gardiner's (rather too tidily English) clarity and speed, Karajan's (largely rhetorical, often meaningless) command, Bernstein's (overpushed) heartfelt commitment, and so on. Wilhelm Furtwangler, whom I esteem above all other Beethoven conductors, considered himself inadequate to conduct what Beethoven himself, at least for a time, regarded as his greatest work. We are fortunate that Jascha Horenstein made a very serious attempt at it and that it was recorded. The sound is fairly good mono at best, but you can hear everything, and it is a performance of tremendous power and commitment. Horenstein's formal grasp of this immense piece is obvious from early on and his expressive power is unstinting throughout. The solo singing is particularly fine, and I have never heard any conductor find the through-line of the Agnus Dei/Dona nobis pacem last movement: for a long time I thought that Beethoven, the greatest composer of resounding conclusions, had for once failed to end a work convincingly, but I think it no more. Horenstein partly locates the core of this last music in Beethoven's deep grief over the failure of the democratic possibilities of Europe to which he had given his heart in youth, only to lose them to Bonapartist wars and subsequent repression--a similar feeling powers the transcendent idealism of the last movement of the Ninth--and Horenstein, with his deep experience of the 20th Century's disasters and his capacity for registering depths of despair--think of his great, unsparing BBC recording of Mahler's Ninth--finds a power and continuity in this music that no one else has touched, and the chiming of Pacem, Pacem at the finish no longer sounds tacked on or unachieved but the earned, resounding triumph of Beethoven's visionary, heartfelt, striving artistry. In one of his few obviously Furtwanglerian moves, Horenstein takes a ritardando clearly implied in Beethoven's writing so that the last pages feel like an enormous, fulfilled outbreath of peace and mercy found at the end of long struggle. Eugen Jochum's superb recording of the Missa was only very briefly available on CD, and his full-hearted faith gave wonderful voice to Beethoven's complex utterance, but Horenstein's ability to also confront the annihilation of hope goes beyond Jochum's noble musicmaking to give us a more complete and profound Missa Solemnis, I think, than has been achieved on record by anyone before. No one who loves Beethoven will want to be without this recording. Horenstein's reading of the Unfinished is also very fine.

The preceding paragraph was written when this recording was new to me, over a year ago. Further listening has only increased my appreciation of it. I'd like to correct the overemphasis on the last movement by pointing out the exhilaration of Horenstein's Gloria--not the fastest on record, but the perhaps most electrifying and the best understood (never mind that overexcited tympanist at the end)--and the deep formal intelligence at work in the Credo, for which his slow initial tempo performs a masterstroke analagous to that in the opening of his Mahler 8th. Then there is the astonishing singing of Teresa Stich-Randall, worth the price of admission on its own. The only thing I can say in demurral is that the excellent mono fails to capture the tonal glory of the solo violin in the Benedictus, for which you need another recording, the Jochum if you can find it, or good luck elsewhere. For me, this is simply one of the great recordings of all time.

Third take: I've recently spent some time with James Levine's grand version, which is almost good enough to be a hi-fi stereo backup for the Horenstein--Vienna Philarmonic, star-studded cast, unbelievable chorus, well judged tempos and architectonics--but it sounds to me as if the solo singers, especially Placido Domingo, though Jessye Norman's not far behind, are singing more for themselves than for the music, or--to put it a shade less subjectively--with a continuous breadth of vibrato more appropriate to nineteenth century opera than to what is still, however vastly expanded, a classical idiom. It's a glamorous, Hollywoodish performance of high quality that provides the histrionics and gilds the surfaces with greater attention than it gives to the depths, where Horenstein is still, as far as I know, unmatched. Also, surprisingly, the vibrato of the solo violin in the Benedictus is so broad that most of the music is effectively out of tune. On the other hand, I'm warming to the Herrweghe recording, which has always seemed a mite underpowered but now comes as something of a relief. Horenstein still rules, and I hope they'll bring back the Jochum.

For Furtwanger's Ninth:
The Ultimate, August 14, 2000
I'd just like to add my voice to the already eloquent five-star chorus. I don't know if there is such a thing, but to me this is the single greatest set of orchestral recordings there has ever been, and the Ninth seems to me the greatest orchestral performance ever recorded--I really do not understand the consensus opinion that the Bayreuth performance is better. The Berlin Ninth is unique, and for a very good reason, as described by other reviewers below. There is nothing like it anywhere else in music.

That said, the set is not perfect. Personally I prefer a Fifth Furtwangler recorded in 1947, despite the clinkers in the solo parts, and the sumptuous EMI Pastorale might be preferable to the one here; but taken all in all this set is unequalled: the greatest Eroica and Ninth ever recorded, and you can take it from there. As for the sound, those of us who have lived with various LP versions over the years know what a superb job was done by the engineers who put this set together.

I've learned over the years that Furtwangler will never be for everyone--witness the demurrals in the reviews below--but it seems to me that anyone who is aware of music's highest expressive and spiritual potential will find a way to these astounding performances.

I'd also recommend that anyone enthralled by this set should also find Furtwangler's last performance of the Ninth, in Lausanne, three months before his death; much of the muscularity is gone, and Ninth stands revealed, in the conductor's last manner, as a radiant piece of music from which all struggle has been refined away by higher contemplation. It is superlatively well recorded, and although it lacks the apocalyptic drama of the 1942 performance, you can hear in great detail what was always Furtwangler's extraordinary sense of inner voicings and texture, which, transposed to one's experience of the Berlin Ninth, deepens further one's experience of this Mount Everest of all orchestral recordings.