Sir Georg Solti last recorded this symphony with the VPO (Decca SET323/4, 10/66—nla). My memory is of a performance which, for all its moments of extrovert excitability, never degenerated into the lightweight or the superficial. Nevertheless, to a greater extent than Strauss, Mahler, even Wagner Bruckner exposed an unresolved tension in Solti's approach. Twenty years later that tension is still present. On the positive side it can create a dialogue between gravity and forcefulness which serves the music well: less positively, there are places where the dialogue is between deliberation and brusqueness, places where dialogue is abandoned altogether and brusqueness dominates.
The whole work is very well played and recorded, with exceptionally clear detailing in a warm but not excessively spacious ambience. But as an interpretation it is the second movement that stands out. From the start the tempo is broad—Solti breaks the 25-minute barrier for the movement as a whole—but the line is finely sustained without over-emphasis, and while the wonderful second theme might benefit from a more flowing tempo and smoother articulation, it never lapses into mannered swoops and swoons. The great climax, with the added percussion that most conductors favour (though not Blomstedt on Denon) is also properly intense, without posturing, and the coda, with outstanding playing from the Chicago horns and tubas, provides a memorable conclusion to one of the finest accounts of this movement ever recorded.
In the first movement there is more evidence of effort, of holding back or pushing on, of over-pointing that exaggerates the local effect at the expense of the longer term. Solti avoids the particular interruptions of flow that for me mar Blomstedt's in many ways admirable version. Yet the central stages, in particular, make too much of contrast, too little of continuity, and although the coda is admirable in power and control it cannot completely counter the divergent tendencies of what has gone before. After an excellent Scherzo Solti also seems rather impatient with the finale. One rather melodramatic pause (letter S) apart, he presses the music forward, not draining it of eloquence, but making it fight for breath here and there. It's not without significance that in this movement Solti is more than half a minute faster than either Blomstedt or Giulini.
There is a wealth of recordings of this symphony available currently in all formats, and as a first CD choice collectors are likely to find Blomstedt on Denon (CD only) or Giulini on DG more consistently satisfying than this new Decca version. My own preference is—just—for Giulini. At certain points—the Adagio's second theme, the principal parts of the Scherzo—he may sound either too stagey or too self-communing, compared with Blomstedt, Solti, or several other contenders. I nevertheless find Giulini's command of the symphony's most far-reaching structural and emotional perspectives the most convincing among recent recordings. On LP and cassette allowing for the no-longer-modern sound Karajan's 1972 version on mid-price EMI still reigns supreme.'