You know Beethoven’s fifth, right? You know how it sounds, right? Wrong. Listen to this, it will make your hair stand on end:
Once heard, never forgotten. There is no more emotional recording of the 5th, simply the best and guaranteed to set the heart racing. The whole album? Yes of course, do it here.
The final two minutes of the 1st movement are spine tingling. 4th movement got me out of the office this morning.
Youtube comment of the day: “I am so proud to be a human when I listen to this”
A line from the Carlos Kleiber discography wikipedia page: “…one reviewer commenting on the [5th] that “it was as if Homer had come back to recite the Iliad.” Couldn’t have put it better. Thank you for posting this Otto. Back to my lurker status.
I like that one.
I bought Kleiber’s version of the 5th on CD decades ago after I picked up a printed guide to classical CDs and it rated it as the best recording available. At that time Kleiber’s 5th and 7th (which is also awesome) were on separate CDs, which I thought was “cheap”. Glad to see they’re combined now, and that Kleiber’s performance is still so highly regarded after all these years!