Anyone who loves Leonard Bernstein will have to hear every performance in this six-disc, all-Beethoven program. Included herein is a blazing Missa Solemnis, a pair of searing late String Quartet arrangements, a host of bracing overtures, two famous complete live performances plus an elegiac Seventh Symphony from Bernstein's last concert. Because of the range of orchestras and recording dates, perhaps the most interesting part of these performances for devoted Bernstein fans will be the ways in which the different orchestras ...
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Anyone who loves Leonard Bernstein will have to hear every performance in this six-disc, all-Beethoven program. Included herein is a blazing Missa Solemnis, a pair of searing late String Quartet arrangements, a host of bracing overtures, two famous complete live performances plus an elegiac Seventh Symphony from Bernstein's last concert. Because of the range of orchestras and recording dates, perhaps the most interesting part of these performances for devoted Bernstein fans will be the ways in which the different orchestras respond to the conductor and the ways the conductor reacts to the orchestras.At first, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks seems uncertain how to react in the 1976 concert for Amnesty International. Its attacks are rough in the Leonore No. 3 Overture and the support is erratic in the following Piano Concerto No. 4 with Claudio Arrau. But by the finale of the concluding Fifth Symphony, Bernstein and the Bavarians are totally together, charging forward with irresistible...
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