Rarely can the Philadelphia sheen have sounded so utterly indecent. It's just what Prokofiev ordered—that decadent juxtaposition of the intensely romantic and the grotesquely sado-masochistic, beauty and bestiality. Muti has caught it all: the way in which the Fiery Angel theme (that's the yearning, searing first subject) soars over the barbaric surface of the first movement. The impulsive gear changes, the brutalizing displacements are well-registered, but Muti's real coup is that upper-string line—Renata's vision clear and shining over everything: oblivious. The Philadelphia violins are supremely well balanced the dominating force here. When you take a look at all that is going on beneath them, you realize how skilled an operation that is. And Muti holds nothing back: his orgiastic climax is truly the stuff of sexual hysteria—exciting and shocking. Though, of course, the real shock of the movement comes in the shape of a hideously conclusive contra-bassoon solo—the worm turning. Muti plays up its significance.
Indeed, he spares us nothing of the festering underbelly of this extraordinary score. The reptilian writhings and retchings of the scherzo make for a particularly bad trip: not even the luxuriant trio (such beguiling string playing—listen to the cellos at 3'43'') proves much of a distraction; that too is an hallucination of sorts. There's a particularly nasty moment (2'15'') where a waspish descent through the strings is met head-on by the ubiquitous contra-bassoon, its ugly head rearing up subito on a dramatic crescendo. A tiny detail, but Muti makes it tell. And always there is the proximity of the sensuous. Muti's slow movement is all about touch and caress, violin glissandos over throbbing, unstable bass lines. In the finale woozy trombone slides horribly distort the opening image of a monstrous exorcism, and once again it is the contra-bassoon who leads the Inquisition to the pyre. Snickering trumpets leave little to the imagination in the flame-tossed peroration: Muti's final chords are duly shattering. This, you will have gathered, is quite a performance, stunningly played, sumptuously recorded—arguably the best we have had on all counts. Its breadth and depth of vision, interpretatively and sonically, is most excitingly offset by the incisiveness and immediacy of its detailing. In tandem is an account of the Classical Symphony which moves elegantly and, where needs be, athletically. But the Third Symphony is the thing unreservedly recommended.'