Considering the mid-20th century vintage of these recordings by Fritz Busch and the Danish Radio Symphony, the sound quality is surprisingly good for live recordings of the time, and the interpretations of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, "Choral," and what is actually the Leonore Overture No. 2, Op. 74a (misidentified on the tracklisting and in the liner notes as the Leonore Overture No. 3) are curiously modern in their briskness, directness, and lack of sentimentality. Recorded in 1950 and 1949, ...
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Considering the mid-20th century vintage of these recordings by Fritz Busch and the Danish Radio Symphony, the sound quality is surprisingly good for live recordings of the time, and the interpretations of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, "Choral," and what is actually the Leonore Overture No. 2, Op. 74a (misidentified on the tracklisting and in the liner notes as the Leonore Overture No. 3) are curiously modern in their briskness, directness, and lack of sentimentality. Recorded in 1950 and 1949, respectively, the symphony and the overture are down-to-business performances, with little of the era's tendency to exaggerate Beethoven's intentions as mystical revelations through the excessive use of rubato and overly reverent tempos. Busch was no sentimentalist, and his Beethoven is serious, efficient, and clear-headed; in a sense he lived by the letter of the score, rather than by the self-indulgences of other less careful conductors. Because of the pains he took to play these scores as...
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