This is an outstanding version of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony—and no surprise, given Barenboim's evident sympathy for the work in concert performances over the past two decades. Like Karajan's reading on DG, it is essentially a 'central' account of the score that attempts neither extreme breadth of utterance (Giulini, also on DG) nor sharp-edged drama in the Dohnanyi style (Decca). Rather it is a reading that combines long lines, flowing but astutely nuanced, and sonorities that are full-bodied yet always finely balanced. The outer movements have great rhetorical and emotional power; the Scherzo is thunderous and glinting by turns. The Adagio begins very slowly but, for once, Barenboim gets away with it, the movement growing organically rather than remaining still-born near the start. Collectors who have Barenboim's earlier recording of the symphony, made for DG in Chicago in 1976, will recognize the performance, though I don't think it is entirely fanciful to think that Barenboim is now even more under the skin of the work. It helps having the Berlin Philharmonic, of course.
This is a live performance and, as you would expect, it is superbly executed, the playing every bit as fine as it is on the two Karajan recordings. Of those, the 1966 version made in the Jesus-Christus Kirche now appears on a mid-price CD ((CD) 429 904-2GGA) with rather a lot of tape hiss, where the later (1975) Philharmonie recording (listed above) is clean, powerful, and well focused. But even that doesn't compete with the natural splendours of the Teldec. This is superb Bruckner sound, spacious and clear, with strings, woodwind and brass at once unerringly 'placed' and finely matched. Given good engineering and the kind of astute playing we have from Barenboim and the Berliners, the Philharmonie is far from being the acoustic lemon it is sometimes said to be. The only curiosity about the recording is the almost total purity of the silence that follows the symphony's massively dissonant climax at the height of the Adagio. Barenboim holds it, most effectively, for a good eight seconds, the kind of abyss of silence into which Furtwangler's audiences invariably injected a whole symphony of throat-clearing. Perhaps Berliners are better behaved nowadays. So, with the recording giving Barenboim the edge even over the 1975 Karajan and a clear lead over the much older 1960 Walter on CBS, this is currently a front-runner where this symphony is concerned. Meanwhile, a correspondent from Dingwall in Scotland reminds me that the man who first played Bruckner's original score (in Munich in 1932), Sigmund von Hausegger, also recorded it for German HMV shortly afterwards (DB4515/21). It would be interesting to have that historic set reissued to see what has happened interpretatively between Hausegger and Barenboim.'