Beethoven

Symphony No 5, Op 67 (a). Overture, 'Coriolan', Op 62 (b) London Philharmonic Orchestra / Klaus Tennstedt LPO (S) LP00087 (43' * ADD) Recorded live at the "Royal Albert Hall, August 20, 1990; (b) Royal Festival Hall, February 23, 1992

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Klaus Tennstedt's reading of Beethoven's Coriolan Overture is typically measured and full-bodied, freighted with meaning. And the recording, made live in London's Royal Festival Hall in February 1992, is pleasingly clean and immediate. The recording of the Fifth Symphony, made in the Royal Albert Hall during a Henry Wood Promenade concert two years earlier, is comparably robust, though the hall's morgue-like acoustic does odd things to the LPO horns in the opening movement.

That said, it is an acoustic which is not unsuited to a performance that has its own burdens to bear. Tennstedt's keenness to deploy the old Romantic trick of turning the symphony's opening four-note motif ('Fate knocking at the door') into an ever more minatory motto as the movement progresses is evidence of this. …