These were sensational recordings in their day. Technically, they still have an enormous power and presence, though digital remastering picks up a certain amount of ambient buzz and bustle. The performances themselves and the orchestral playing now sound, if anything, even more masterful than they did in the 1950s. In those days men rather than milksops still commanded the world's great orchestras and martinets like Reiner were the rule rather than the exception. This isn't a spiritually searching or even architecturally cogent reading of the Eroica. It is a world apart from Klemperer's 1955 mono recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra on EMI, Trevor Harvey's comparison back in 1957. Rather, it is a striking illustration of the impact on Beethoven of a great conqueror-conductor. For once, the old solecism 'Reiner's Eroica' is apt to the matter in hand. The only movement that he doesn't urge into life like some stern charioteer is the Funeral March, here grand and picturesque. The scherzo and the Promethean finale rather thrive on Reiner's treatment, as does Coriolan, masterful and dangerously suave. The first movement of the Eroica goes at several different tempos, wilfully welded into a single shape by Reiner. A human face can be glimpsed behind the mask; but the mask itself is made of iron.'