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The BEST performance is...

...

But first let me say, it's a great privilege to be able to utter that phrase knowing that it drives certain unamiable people into a near-apoplexy of rudeness. To these sorts, all manner of circumlocution is acceptable: "My favorite is...", "I'll take the...", "I like...", or even "The best I've ever heard" -- which skirts dangerously near the forbidden territory.

Professional critics have long known that when they offer their views there will inevitably be a certain number of responses along the lines of, "Who are you to say those things?" Or, "How dare you express yourself so definitely?" Or (my favorite), "That's just your opinion."

Back over two score years ago when the great Michael Steinberg joined the Boston Globe as music critic, he set out against much of our Symphony's music-making under Munch, then Leinsdorf. He was just saying what most of us already knew, but man! the crap he took. "Who are you to say those terrible things?" One time the paper published a group of such fulminating letters and Michael graciously responded, "Who am I? I am the music critic of the Boston Globe, paid to deliver my informed opinions. And in the end, gentlemen, these *are* but my opinions. What did you expect? If I had to precede everything I say with, 'It is my opinion that...', my writing would look very dull indeed."

So I took my lesson, as anyone ought.

Now: The BEST performance is... always the live one!

The Fifth, of all Beethoven symphonies, is the one least susceptible to studio management. It demands that a momentum be developed from beginning to end that can only be achieved (this is my opinion, in case you missed the prologue, but rip into me if that's your happiness) in a non-stop situation. I.e., live. Not to say that every live performance is great!

First time I heard Ben Zander conduct the Fifth, c. 1983, it was a revelation. Although the tempi were generally even faster, it had none of that Toscanini rushedness. And with wholly new tempo relationships Zander showed he had rethought the entire work. Even those famous first two measures were gloriously better. A recording of that concert was issued on cassette, which I have, but never on LP or CD. Of that same performance in Carnegie Hall, Andrew Porter in the New Yorker wrote, "If Mr. Zander is right, we have been listening to the music of the greatest composer only in misrepresentation."

I have not heard Zander's 1998 Philharmonia traversal.

Another fine performance, more along "traditional" lines, was kindly supplied to me by an inmate here: Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Phils. (Downloaded in high-res onto CD, it sounds as good as many radio broadcasts.) Anything I may find interpretatively questionable is swept away by the momentum of the event.

Finally we come to the best of all: A live radio recording made by Hermann Scherchen with a scrappy little Swiss band in 1965, issued on an obscure CD label that I happened to pick up at a Tower remainder department several years ago. It's total magic. Even after the Zander revelations, there are ways the music goes here that we've never heard before, and these ways are the right ways. This is the one I now always pick, when I need a Fifth.

clark

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