Hermann Scherchen dirige Beethoven, Vol. 1

Fans of Beethoven's symphonies should by all means hear these truly revelatory performances of the First through Fourth symphonies led by Hermann Scherchen, recorded in 1951 and 1954, and remastered here by Tahra. Unlike virtually every other German conductor of his time (except possibly Erich Kleiber), Scherchen was more concerned with line and energy than with mass and momentum. Compared with contemporaneous performances by Wilhelm Furtwängler, Scherchen's are cleaner in tone, clearer in texture, and vastly more ... Read More

Fans of Beethoven's symphonies should by all means hear these truly revelatory performances of the First through Fourth symphonies led by Hermann Scherchen, recorded in 1951 and 1954, and remastered here by Tahra. Unlike virtually every other German conductor of his time (except possibly Erich Kleiber), Scherchen was more concerned with line and energy than with mass and momentum. Compared with contemporaneous performances by Wilhelm Furtwängler, Scherchen's are cleaner in tone, clearer in texture, and vastly more propulsive. Leading the Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera in the First, the Vienna Symphony in the Third, and the Royal Philharmonic in the Second and Fourth, Scherchen creates readings that are at once incredibly lucid and tremendously exciting, with a linear intensity that only Toscanini could match at the time. There are some unfortunate flaws -- the opening chord of the Third, for example, sounds more like an arpeggio than a solidly struck sonority -- but the overall strength of these... Read Less