BEETHOVEN. Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra / Carlo Maria Giulini. DG digital 10 2532 049; LEI 3303 049.

Selected comparisons.

Concertgebouw, E. Kleiber (1/54) (10/69) (R) ECS518

VPO, C. Kleiber (6/75) 2530 516

BPO, Karajan (10/77) (4/78) (R) 2531 105

Philh, Sanderling (11/81) (R) ASD41 36

Giulini's account of the Fifth Symphony has great weight and impetus: indeed, I can recall no reading since those of Kleiber and Klemperer in the 1950s which has seemed at once so lofty and alive as this.

After the three-quarter speed Falstaff at Covent Garden, I was surprised to hear Giulini conducting a performance which is so thrustlul and majestic, and shorn of all mannerism. The first movement has great presence; the second is slow but not inert, majestic rather than pompous. In the third movement atmosphere is very precisely gauged, the eerie crepuscular mood finely realized. The finale, broadly shaped, is very majestic and has its exposition repeat (omitted by Karajan on DG and Sanderling on HMV) though the failure to relate the tempo of the Scherzo to that of the finale robs the pulse of some of its inevitability at the point of transition. (Under conductors like Klemperer and Sanderling the finale's minim equals the Scherzo's dotted minim.) Erich Kleiber (Decca) also misses the equation at similar speeds to Giulini. Indeed, as Giulini's way with the first movement is similar to Erich Kleiber's, I'm left speculating about possible influences here. Both avoid Carlos Kleiber's characteristic solecism of playing the opening motif in triplets, but neither Erich Kleiber nor Giulini gives much space to the extra tied minim in bar 4. At this point, Sanderling is much more explicit.

The DG digital sound, warm and curiously upholstered, allows for far greater transparency of detail than seems probable at the outset. Woodwind detail is never obscured (the oboe's dying falls in the first movement coda or the finale's piccolo) and bass lines are resolute. Were it not for EMI's exaggerated view of cellos and basses in the third movement Trio, I would prefer the sound which they provide for Sanderling, firm, clear, and uncluttered. But DG provides an impressive match for Giulini's performance, as they did previously for Karajan and Carlos Kleiber.

This, then, is an immensely authoritative performance of a symphony which all too easily finds conductors out. I shall continue to keep my old Klemperer record (Columbia mono 330051, I l/56—nla), not least for Klemperer's added élan in the finale. Disconcertingly, though, I find that Giulini makes the hitherto highly commended Carlos Kleiber seem somewhat frenetic and immature; comparisons, as Shakespeare observed, can be odious. R.O.