Two very different Beethoven cycles: the Solti has been widely praised; the Bernstein too has its admirers, though it's customary to express decent reservation at the American maestro's contrasting tendencies to wallow or to drive the music ferociously forward. In the slow movements of the Eroica and the Choral, and even in the slow introduction to the First Symphony, Bernstein clearly sets out to wring the juices from every note, but the effect isn't nearly so exaggerated as is sometimes made out; the point is that whatever Bernstein does, he really means it, and his ability to communicate his intense feelings about the music to the orchestra, and thus to the audience, is quite remarkable. It is manifest not only in the energetic sweep of each performance, but also in a hundred tiny felicities—such as the oboe's quasi-improvisatory upward run in the first movement recapitulation of No. 7, or the halting violin phrases just before the final allegro surge of No. 4. One may not approve of everything he does—I'm not convinced by his minim=previous dotted minim equation at the start of No. 5's finale, nor do I care care for the occasional intimations of Mahlerian angst—but each interpretation has a lived-through quality that lends it astonishing conviction. Even if, as I do, you ultimately reject the Bernstein vision of Beethoven the symphonist, he still has a way of reminding you what the music can do: no one else today can make the great C major eruption in the Marcia funebre of No. 3 blaze like this; memories of Bernstein in such moments will take a long time to fade.
Certainly Solti won't be the one to banish them. His performances can be very intense, and some of the slow movements have a pointed immediacy that won't allow anything but full concentration; there's considerable drive in some of the fast movements too, but Solti's articulation is full of sharp accents and whiplash sforzandos—as, strikingly, in the first movement of No. 7. Like Bernstein, Solti takes his time over the Adagio of No. 9, but there isn't the same feeling of inner purpose, and although Solti is more sparing with his rubato, there can be a forced quality that makes it less palatable (the splitting of the symphony between discs is an added disadvantage). Both sets sound well on CD, though it's a shame the new medium hasn't brought out more of the concert ambience of the Bernstein performances; and I noticed what sounds like a bad tape drop-out in the finale of Solti's No. 6 (at about 7'50'')—quite startling.'