No listener to Solti's Eroica is likely to accuse him of bland, featureless phrasing. The first movement is a perfect demonstration of the Soltian style of emphasis: he's never afraid to call a sforzando a sforzando, and anything with a staccato point or an accent above it is picked out with merciless sharpness. Fair enough, you might say: the score is full of staccatos and accents, but when they dominate one's impression of the movement at the expense of larger meaning, then surely something isn't right. Loud/soft contrasts can be very effective, but too often sustained fortissimos (like the development's massively syncopated first climax) emerge with unrelenting fierceness and the sense of shape recedes.
Things improve considerably in the Marcia funebre. The performance has pace, the accents now take their place as part of longer phrases and there's a corresponding gain in drama (as opposed to passing effect). The strings' sudden opening out in the recapitulation has real warmth, and in the cellos' and basses' stabbing fortissimo A flats the emphasis is just right.
In the climaxes of the finale, though, the tub takes another pounding. Much as one may admire the concentrated energy and taut rhythmic articulation, it's not a performance that carries one with it. And the same goes for the Egmont Overture: the culminating 'Victory Symphony' is driven as hard as it will go, but jubilant it isn't.
The First and Second Symphonies are not so aggressively supercharged, though there are plenty of sharp accents in the outer allegros, and while Solti's intensity adds drama to certain key moments in the slow movements, there's a lack of corresponding Innigkeit—and with the memory of Klemperer's fine Second (EMI) still very much present I'm not prepared to do without it. For a First that combines energy with subtlety and phrasing that really breathes, one could try Haitink (Philips), though the performance of the Second coupled with it is disappointing. Both Norrington (EMI) and Bruggen (Philips) amongst the period-instrument group will do nicely in either No. 1 or No. 2. For the Eroica the 1949 Toscanini is available on a single disc from RCA, coupled with a volcanic First.'