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In the Seventh, Kleiber is still terrific, but perhaps not so clearly ahead of his competitors. My main quibble is that he has the violins play the last phrase of the second movement pizzicato - and to my ears, the effect is jarring. Walter, Solti, and Muti deliver performances which can compete with Kleiber's here - but this is incontestably a distinguished recording. Having both of these performances on one CD for such a small price makes it a no-brainer. Buy it!
Kleiber shares one characteristic with the late Leonard Bersnstein - he makes all music interesting. How many times has the average musician in the Vienna Philharmonic performed these two most popular of Beethoven's symphonies? As a symphonic musician myself, I would venture that most of them have long ago lost count. Each player has performed these symphonies scores, if not hundreds of times in his career - under the batons of conductors ranging from the memorable to the pedestrian to the ...
It is said that this venerable and legendary orchestra is incapable of a poor performance, no matter what overdressed ... may be standing upon the podium, spastically flailing away. But the curse and greatest fear of every seasoned orchestral musician is not that his or her playing skills may fail him. His greatest fear is BOREDOM! How many times can you perform Beethoven's 5th and 7th symphonies until you have nothing left to say? Until there is nothing left to discover? Until you step on your ya-ya and miss a repeat in the third movement because you were thinking about your tanking marriage, your disintegrating old jalopy, your pregnant and ...15-year-old daughter - anything except where you were supposed to be, intensely focused on your music?
The Vienna Philharmonic, from this reviewer's experience, IS incapable of a bad performance. But unfortunately it isn't incapable of a boring one. Except, that is, when Carlos Kleiber is the maestro. There is a discipline and attention to minute detail, and a white-hot intensity to these performances that is extremely rare and extremely precious.
These same performances were also video taped for television presentation. One could see that these musicians were on a mission, delivering their absolute all with such commitment as to belie the fact that these same players could (and under lesser conductors probably have) sleepwalk through these warhorses. The audience, to a person, was absolutely rapt - thoroughly transported to that sublime space that on this earth only the greatest art can accomplish. And on CD, without that added visual input, these qualities still come through - an even rarer thing indeed. This is NOT a recording one puts on in the background while "multi-tasking" one's way through household chores. It deserves, COMMANDS, one's undivided attention.
So PLEASE! Buy this recording, no matter how many other recordings you may already have of these symphonies.
BUT...
Be aware that these recordings were made in the late 1970's, in Vienna's famous Musikvereinsaal. While the live acoustics of this venue are wonderful, it is a difficult hall in which to satisfactorily record. Recordings from there often sound dry and shrill. Deutsche Grammophon "tonmeisters" earned notoriety, especially during this period, for producing glassy, harsh, over-miked, over-mixed horrors. At least this recording is partially redeemed by having been mastered on analog tape. DG's digital efforts have typically been unlistenably awful, which is why to this reviewer, unless the performance is truly remarkable in some way, that bright yellow DG label may as well be a "Bio-Hazard" warning.
On the other hand, other critics have said they like "that" sound. So all I can say is, "De gustibus non est disputandum." - "On matters of taste there is no argument." So, "Caveat emptor!" - "Buyer beware!" But even if, like with Yours Truly, the audio quality causes one's fillings to ache, this recording is a "must have."