Tennstedt's big, looming account of Mahler's Ninth Symphony appeared before either of the two Karajan versions and must be accounted eclipsed by both. The two Karajan DG performances—the studio performance on LP and the live performance listed above—are sonically sparer, edged round with the chill of death, but ablaze at nodal points. Karajan's is an altogether more searching reading spiritually and a more coherent reading intellectually. Indeed, it is one of the principal glories of Karajan's conducting that one climax does not pre-empt another. Where Tennstedt, and Solti on Decca, are often vainly engaged in attempting to reach Heaven by piling Pelion on Ossa, Karajan surveys the musical landscape before him with better instruments, a keener eye, and altogether sharper judgement.
On CD more than on LP, Tennstedt's reading, and the recording, seem big, brutal, and rather coarse: ''monster music'' as the child of a colleague once described one of Mahler's more stentorian outpourings. Collectors in search of this kind of general approach to the Ninth Symphony—big, black, and monumental—would be better advised to seek out Klemperer's celebrated LP reading at mid-price on HMV.'