If Bernstein is at his most wilful in this live recording of Tchaikovsky's Fifth, less consistent than he was in his equally eccentric account of the Pathetique (now available on mid-price DG (CD) 431 046-2GBE, 5/87), Szell is at his supreme best in a white-hot studio performance, passionate and spontaneous-sounding. On a bargain label in the Odyssey series his disc wins the strongest recommendation.
With the Bernstein I fear that the inconsistencies and the very variable playing of the New York Philarmonic, along with sound which grows rough and confused in tuttis, get in the way of recommending it, even with the sort of reservations required with the Pathetique. There the extremely slow speeds had a concentration and logic which conveyed a strongly individual, valid view. In the Fifth a ponderously slow reading of the introduction leads to an attack on the Allegro con anima so hectic that ensemble is totally undermined, and there is no lift to rhythms, just a scramble. Needless to say, certain sections, for example the molto piu tranquillo (track 1, 6'12''), find Bernstein drawing the music out exaggeratedly in the opposite direction. He is at his best in moulding the great horn solo at the start of the slow movement, but again the speed is so slow that the music begins to sag. Even the waltz is surprisingly stodgy in its rhythms, with poor playing from the violins, and the finale matches the first movement in its extremity of contrast between the heavily emphatic introduction and the Allegro vivace which follows, so hectic that the playing becomes perfunctory. The Romeo and Juliet Overture follows a similar pattern, and even Bernstein's drawing out of the great love theme is oddly stiff rhythmically. This is plainly an instance where Bernstein's technique of having live recordings edited together has failed to produce a convincing or consistent result.
The Szell by contrast, recorded under studio conditions in the warm ambience of the Masonic Temple in Cleveland, circa 1960, has an easy and natural flexibility that makes it sound like a live performance. In Britain the recording was issued only after Szell's death on the mid-price CBS Classics label, but I was not the only one to acclaim it as among the finest versions ever. Szell's speeds compared with those of Jansons's (Chandos) are generally slightly broader, but more importantly he allows himself more variations of tempo, notably when he sidles in to the Allegro con anima at a much slower speed than his basic one, with totally convincing results. The passionate intensity of the slow movement, the lightness and point of the waltz, and the surging excitement of the finale, not taken specially fast but with pinpoint articulation, all make for an exceptional reading.
The only question-mark is over the sound. Unlike most Cleveland recordings of the period—usually made in Severance Hall—it is warm and rounded with plenty of body, but in the transfer it has lost some of its bite, acquiring a sort of 'low-breathing' background, presumably of tape noise. For such a performance on bargain label that hardly matters, any more than the absence of a fill-up.'