Morris presents the Ninth Symphony in a traditional reading, warm and eloquent and persuasively played and sung. The first movement is directly and humanely argued; and the Scherzo, lacking its second repeat, is purposeful, with an almost predictably songful treatment of the Trio. The third movement is lingeringly paced and phrased, suffused with warmth, not as intolerably slow as, say, Solti (on Decca) but a long way from the metronome marks that Norrington (EMI) enacts, and Klemperer (also EMI) and Toscanini (RCA) don't entirely overlook. The slow movement, as Morris directs it, is Beethoven at his most Ossianic. In the finale, the recitatives have a proper speaking impetus; and the choir and soloists, a fine team with a pronounced Welsh bias, are notably attentive to the shape and force of the words they are uttering (though ''Bruder'' gets its opening consonants rather brutally rolled once or twice). As a performance it has plenty of cogency and presence despite some potential drawbacks: some enforced (by Beethoven) tempo changes that only just come off, a very slow initial enunciation of the joy theme, lacking symphonic impetus and not quite as obviously moulded into organic life as in the old 1951 mono Bayreuth Furtwangler performance (again on EMI). In the fugato Morris, typically, stresses lyric and gestural moments within the music's forward surge.
The recording, made in Walthamstow Town Hall, has a generous acoustic that avoids sounding too big or bland, though it is opened up to quite a size in the finale. Here I don't understand why the Alla marcia begins with such loud thumping bassoons and drum (the marking is pianissimo) only to drop back for the wind-band entry at bar 13 to something a good deal quieter and more distant. But there is no such thing as an ideal recording of the Ninth; it is beyond the reach of technology, which is perhaps to be accounted both a pity and a blessing. Nor, for the plethora of versions now on CD, is it a work where recommendable versions abound. Klemperer's is a very great performance indeed despite some indifferent singing in pans of the finale; and I see the Stokowski (the reading of a romantic not wholly unlike Morris) is back on a Decca CD (to be reviewed later). Toscanini, Masur (Philips), and Karajan all conduct fine versions in their different ways with a greater degree of concentration and rigour than Morris sometimes achieves at no loss to the general fire and eloquence of their performances. Karajan's finale, in his 1977 DG recording reissued on CD in 1987, is a particular success, and Toscanini, in RCA's rather spare 1952 mono recording, is at his quite literally terrific best throughout.'