It is possible to be too much in awe of the Ninth Symphony. Self-belief and a touch of flamboyance, such as we have here from Raymond Leppard, never did anyone any harm. After all, one of the finest of all recorded post-war Ninths came from Stokowski, no less (Decca Phase 4, 10/70 – nla). Leppard’s direction of the difficult first movement is particularly impressive, strong yet songful, urgent yet happy to accommodate the frequent fluctuations of pace the music asks for and the score demands. It is also a ripe-toned performance, something of a sine qua non when fashioning the special sound-world and the very obviously post-classical harmonic style of this extraordinary work. But, then, even as an early pioneer of the revival of interest in pre-classical repertory, Leppard was never a member of the rope-sandal-and-metronome school of interpretation.
The Scherzo, taken more slowly than usual, also goes very well. There is a nice spring to the rhythm and the structure is beautifully pointed (the recapitulation within the Scherzo’s second half eased gently in). The slow movement, somewhat surprisingly, is given a slightly restless performance, as though Leppard distrusts the Germanic soulfulness of the movement’s opening paragraphs. He seems happier with the wind-band sections or pointing the phrasing of string-led variations. In the finale, he rather overdoes this, compartmentalizing the phrasing (in the first statement of the ‘Joy’ theme, for example) in a way that borders on the eccentric, and turning staccato markings into a cue for sharp accents and shortened note values.
There is a strong team of soloists and some robust singing from the choir; though, deliberately or otherwise, a note of coarseness creeps into the performance in the finale, something that is heralded by the cellos’ and basses’ rather hail-fellow-well-met treatment of the instrumental recitatives and the start of the ‘Joy’ theme itself. The recording may also have something to do with this. Bold and clear in the earlier movements, it takes on a slightly brasher, rather more manipulated feel in the finale. Still, I cannot think of a better super-bargain Ninth than this. Gramophone readers who already have famous recordings of the Ninth conducted by Furtwangler (for preference), Klemperer, Karajan or Toscanini are thus advised not to sneer if they see the Tring Royal Philharmonic Collection disc lying near the CD player in a neighbour’s house.
Bernard Haitink’s live 1980 Concertgebouw performance did not greatly excite EG when it first appeared. There is some fine choral singing in the finale (though a poorly matched solo quartet) but the performance as a whole, for all its good intentions, seems to lack precisely that dimension of daredevil insouciance that helps bring the Leppard so vividly to life.'