Beethoven: Symphony No. 9

How many great Böhm Ninths are there? There's one for every decade of his career. There's the maniacal 1941 Ninth with the Staatskapelle Dresden. There's the fanatical 1954 Ninth with the Hessischen Rundfunks. There's the ecstatic 1963 Ninth with the Orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival. There's the transcendent 1970 Ninth with the Vienna Philharmonic. And, only months before his death, there's the sublime 1980 Ninth once again with the Vienna Philharmonic. Of these, the last two from Vienna have been more or less continuously in print on Deutsche Grammophon since they were released, but the first three from Dresden, Frankfurt, and Bayreuth have been only intermittently available on a multitude of historic labels. The rarest of these may be the Frankfurt. The Hessian Radio Symphony was not in the same league as the Vienna, the Dresden, or even the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, but through dedication verging on compulsion and force verging on fear, Böhm forges the Hessians into an ensemble fit to play his numinous conception of the Ninth and, through a mixture of terror and fervor, it performs a Ninth of overwhelming power and unbearable intensity. The singers are all terrific, but soprano Teresa Stich-Randall and especially bass Gottlob Frick are outstanding. The choirs of the Hessian Radio and Frankfurt's Singakademie sing with unfettered joy. Archipel's sound is the best Böhm's 1954 Ninth has ever had: warm and immediate and with the slight patina of half-century-old acoustics that only add to its sense of reality. ~ James Leonard, All Music Guide