Beethoven Symphony no 5 & 7 - Klemperer - 1955 Mono

Naxos have now given us a CD of two of the most important Beethoven recordings ever made. Klemperer (1885-1973) arguably had a greater feel for the structure of these pillars of the classical repertoire than any other conductor in history. The detail of the music is always expressed to fit within the structure of the bigger picture of the movement as a whole. He was signed up for EMI by the impresario, Walter Legge (Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's husband) after Legge heard him conduct at the Festival of Britain in 1951. It would have been much better if Klemperer had recorded a cycle of the Beethoven symphonies in 1951 or 52 but official red tape including problems with his passport held up the start of his contract until 1954 by which time he was nearly 70. That mattered because Klemperer's later recordings show that he was just about to slow up in his tempi gradually over the rest of his career so that the main EMI set of Klemperer Beethoven recorded in about 1958 and in 1960 (the stereo remakes of his earlier mono recordings) are increasingly too slow and unrepresentative of his career as a whole even if his sense of the music's structure is admittedly retained. The earlier mono recordings referred to are a fine Eroica from 1955 and these two recordings of the Fifth and Seventh symphonies.

The recording of the Seventh symphony here is a different take from the 1955 experimental stereo version released on the Great Recordings of the Century label of the same coupling, and in this mono version the sound balance is much clearer and the tension is plainly more electric. - Amazon.com

Thanks to original anonymous uploader!

Links
http://rapidshare.com/files/361379136/BeetKleMonorar.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/361401582/BeetKleMonorar.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/361424498/BeetKleMonorar.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/361438285/BeetKleMonorar.part4.rar