I feel about the Vienna Symphony and Inbal's Leningrad much as I did about their Shostakovich Tenth (9/92)—''deeply felt, well played and admirably recorded'', lacking not in passion but in sting. Cellos and basses get seriously behind the beat near the beginning (from 1'25'', two bars before figure 4), but that proves untypical of what is really a very well disciplined account; Inbal's vocal contributions are still obtrusive and not matched by any special response in the playing. More seriously, the woodwind do not have the weight of tone to make their mark as they should and the over-all impression remains that the orchestra does not have the music in its blood. This is not an impressive or grand symphony; it is a terrifying one.
In the continuing absence of the classic recordings of the past (Mravinsky, Svetlanov) I can only continue to plug Rozhdestvensky on Olympia for an idiomatic single-disc account and Bernstein (DG) for an expensive and controversial two-disc alternative.'