I suppose it is true, as Voltaire somewhat obliquely remarked, that the best is the enemy of the good. Certainly there is no need to express disappointment over an account of the Ninth Symphony as cogent and as utterly competent—musically and technically—as this one, recorded live at New Year concerts in Vienna a year ago. It is also amusing to contemplate the fact that whilst the glitterati were down the road wallowing in Strauss waltzes, there were others in Vienna at New Year prepared to contemplate higher things. Indeed, in the accompanying booklet Eliahu Inbal writes about some of these issues, even going as far as to contemplate the music in symbolic terms. The second movement Trio, he suggests, is a Resurrection (quite a brisk one as it turns out) whilst the Scherzo itself is an Exodus after the first movement's accumulated sense of hopelessness. Inbal also mentions The Clockwork Orange, suggesting that Kubrick's film has a lot to answer for in the progressive worldwide vulgarization of the symphony's famous joy theme. A rather harsh view, you might think. There are numerous institutions, from the EEC downwards, who have done their bit to debase this music. And, in any case, Burgess's original novel can have done the Ninth nothing but good.
Over the years, Inbal tells us, he has seen the Ninth in a series of conflicting perspectives. Now angry and full of revolutionary impetus, now more lyrical and serene. Viewed from that standpoint, the present performance offers a kind of living synthesis: clarity of purpose and, in the end, a good deal of fire, coexisting with a certain equanimity of mood that in no way lapses into dullness or routine. Certainly, I sense here none of the spiritual accidie of Abbado's notoriously blank 1986 account of the Ninth, also recorded live, and in Vienna, though with the more prestigious Philharmonic for DG. Furtwangler's live 1951 Bayreuth performance (EMI) is another matter.
Inbal conducts a generally clean account of the text, with a full clutch of repeats in the Scherzo and few traditional accretions—though we do get big timpani swells, Toscanini-style, in the first movement's D major onslaught. Tempos are judiciously chosen and always forward moving. Under Inbal the slow movement does not hang fire as it does under some of the great maestros. After a slightly uneasy start, the descending two-note figure more punched than sprung and some occasional rawness in the ensemble, the VSO settles well to its task. It is an excellent but underrated orchestra and was so even in the 1950s when Karajan led it, Harnoncourt played in the cello section, and Ancerl turned up to record with them as good a New World Symphony as you will hear this side of the Vltava (Fontana, 3/59—nla).
The Denon recording, in the first three movements, is excellent, clear and natural and disarming in its lack of sonic pretention. It also gives an unusually full and clear impression of the gargantuan finale, though at one point the excellent Robert Lloyd has to compete for our attention with a rather over zealous first oboe. The choir is especially well placed and reproduced. They are a fresh-voiced group whose only fault is a rather too dogged way with the joy theme when it is being rapped out at full throttle. Robert Tear sings resolutely and with a touch of menace and one of Karajan's ex-Sophies, the imposingly named Brigitte Poschner-Klebel, sings very sweetly until she slightly spreads the two horrendously exposed Bs.
This is not a Ninth, I confess, which much excited me in prospect. But in practice, at a single complete hearing, it more than held my interest. Like some older studio Ninths—Schmidt-Isserstedt's on Decca or Masur's on Philips—it goes close to the heart of the work without ever attempting, as a performance, to give itself airs. No, I shall not be throwing out my Klemperer on EMI or my Toscanini. But on this occasion it certainly was rewarding, as Burgess's hero has it, ''to be left alone with the glorious Ninth of Ludwig van''.'