Music and Vinyl: Beethoven

From the days when it was acceptable for purveyors of lung cancer to sponsor the arts, du Maurier did the obvious and chose to design the box for its set of Beethoven Symphonies like an oversize packet of 20 cigarettes. Once you get passed that, the music making inside is, thankfully, worthwhile.

About a year ago I posted Otto Klemperer's 1959 Columbia recording of Beethoven's 5th Symphony with the Philharmonia, and the same orchestra was used for this 1981 Kurt Sanderling recording.

Sanderling, who was born in Prussia in 1912 went to the Soviet Union in 1936 and worked with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Leningrad Philharmonic. He also had both professional and personal relationships with Dmitri Shostakovich. Returning to East Germany in 1960 to become chief conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra - a rival outfit to the Berlin Philharmonic over in the western half of the city - he also worked with the Dresden Staatskapelle.

His first concert with the Philharmonia in the UK was deputising for Otto Klemperer in 1972, and much later - in 1996 - he became the orchestra's Conductor Emeritus.

The biographical note about Sanderling in this set says he was often compared to Otto Klemperer, both coming from a shared European tradition. How their interpretations of Beethoven's 5th compare, well, have a listen and decide. Sanderling's Beethoven cycle was discussed in this MusicWeb article.

Incidentally, this EMI/du Maurier set is a very early digital recording - pre-dating the launch of the Compact Disc by a couple of years. Is the sound of the 1959 Columbia recording actually better?