Solti's new Pastoral isn't strikingly different from his earlier, 1975, Chicago Symphony Orchestra recording, now available in a mid-price Decca Ovation set ((CD) 421 673-2DM6), which I reviewed in March last year. Once again my feelings are mixed. There is more drive here, with some figures strongly, even brusquely pointed (disturbingly so in the finale's C major second group) and the outer movements swing along more energetically, but there's a counterbalancing tendency to smooth over details, like the second vioun and woodwind phrases near the start of the first movement recapitulation (bars 289-92). The great clarinet and bassoon hymn in the introduction to Leonore No. 3 is also strangely low-key.
In passages like the long crescendo that begins the Allegro of Leonore Solti shows himself expert in whipping up excitement; what I don't feel is an increase in warmth. The brass blaze, the strings bows cut deeply—it's certainly exciting—but in the end electric charge simply isn't enough. There's less opportunity to run such risks in the Pastoral and Solti tempers his approach accordingly, but it's still a performance that strikes me as by turns over- or under-charged: it rarely seems to strike a happy balance. And even then, put Solti beside the luxurious Bernstein (DG), the warmblooded and intelligent Walter (mid-price CBS) or the keener but much more subtly featured Erich Kleiber, also on Decca (try Kleiber and Solti in the first minute or so of the finale and you'll see what I mean) and the shortcomings are quickly spotlit. Returning to Solti in the ''Szene am Bach'' I find the big sighs in bars 125–8 curiously lacking in conviction, for all the emphasis.
Solti is more vividly recorded than any of the competitors listed above, but for sheer density of musical insight I'd turn to Walter or the much older-sounding Kleiber any day.'