Kind of like a Florence Foster Jenkins, but with conducting instead of singing!
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!!! Mr Kaplan doesn’t deserve that. Listen to this and agree this isn’t the work of a hack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlP3SoMhkeQ
There is one recording that I think runs it close, but in this case I realise I am a minority:
Both Levine and Solti had the great advantage of a cast within which every voice stands out, but which blend beautifully when the music calls for it. It’s this aspect which sets them apart from otherwise distinguished rival recordings by Kleiber, Böhm, Giulini, Davis, Haitink, Abbado, even Marriner. More modern recordings by Jacobs, Nezet and Curentzis don’t even come close…
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True, but the baseline is different. The VPO consists of world-class musicians who could probably play Mahler No. 2 decently just following the concertmaster! 
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I’m aware of the several versions of Karajan and Beethoven’s Symphonies and varied opinions. But this clean set of the the 1984/85 recordings in slip case, 6cds and booklet for £3.50 in a local charity shop was too good to set aside.
Beethoven has never been in my regular listening list, so an opportunity to explore at my leisure.
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Supplement the Karajan with any Carlos Kleiber Beethoven symphony recordings that you’re able to find. Karajan was dependable, and his Berliners were a great orchestra, but Kleiber was on a different level. It’s a great shame that he didn’t particularly like making recordings.
Yes @anon70766008, I had recently added a Carlos Kleiber recording of Beethoven’s 5th to my Qobuz favourites, based on some of your discussions above.
I find Beethoven very tuneful easy listening. If that sounds derogatory, it’s not meant to. They are great pieces of music, but they just don’t tug at my emotions they way something like a Vaughan Williams Symphony does. Don’t know why.
Either way I’m enjoying these CDs and recordings very much this weekend.
I love RVW, and certainly Beethoven was working with a narrower musical landscape than we are used to today, just based on historical style (although many of his symphonies broke new ground), but I find his slow movements tug at my emotions quite a bit. And then there is the entire 7th symphony, and the sublime moment in the last movement of the 9th when the naked cellos come in, followed by the strings and oboe, and then the whole orchestra taking up the “Freude, Schöner Götterfunken” melody for the first time. I always catch my breath right there and sometimes am moved to tears. Perhaps not everyone feels it the same way, but I feel that Beethoven’s music has incredible emotional power.
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I am similar to you and VW is my favourite composer. I do enjoy Beethoven’s symphonies but prefer his string quartets and piano sonatas. I can’t really explain why. With Brahms I like both his symphonies and smaller pieces. Perhaps as symphony music was changing towards the end of the 19th century?? When I started with my first proper hifi system it was Walton’s First Symphony that made a big impression on me and encouraged me to expand my classical listening using BBC Radio 3 to find new music.
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Thank you for this post, was not aware of this box. Will nicely complement my incomplete collection of Suzuki and Koopmans Bach cantatas. Just ordered it.
To be honest, had I seen the Herreweghe set earlier, I would have bought that and passed on Harnoncourt/Leonhardt. I already had a 4-disc sampling of their recordings. I also have recordings by Gardiner, Kuijken, Montreal Baroque (wonderful), and a half dozen others.
And while, I was fascinated by the Harnoncourt/Leonhardt sound back in the 1970s, when I first heard it, today I prefer a more refined sound.
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Absolutely. The slow movements of Beethoven’s symphonies and concertos are to die for…
Listen to 9 minutes of heaven…
If this doesn’t tug at your heart, then NOTHING will… 
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… and this. Possibly the most wonderful slow movement in a symphony ever.
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One of my desert island discs: Abbado’s Don Carlos, in Italianate French.
Cheers
EJ
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This brings to mind one of those moments that could make an opera fan of just about anyone! Absolutely chilling performance of this incredible scene, with Plishka and Hines from the Metropolitan Opera. One of my all-time favorite moments in opera.
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I am about to commit heresy. I have never been a great lover of Verdi operas; there, I’ve said it.
I remember going to Don Carlos and I was so bored BUT that scene with the Grand Inquisitor was just dynamite. I have never forgotten it - shame it was only 10 minutes out of half a lifetime.
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Half-a-lifetime is about right for Don Carlos! I feel like there isn’t just one Verdi. There are three. The big grand opera composer (e.g. Don Carlos, Nabucco), the composer of the 3 gems (i.e., Traviata, Rigoletto, Trovatore), and the composer of mature masterworks (e.g., Aida, Otello, Falstaff). I definitely gravitate more toward the latter two categories, which have little resemblance to the first category! I can’t usually sit through the full French Don Carlos, either, but it has some great moments, and the recording EJ mentions is top-notch.
To me every note of the five act Don Carlo is golden, at the level of Otello and Aida. Like Macbeth and Boccanegra, Verdi extensively reworked Don Carlos and most performances follow a hybrid of the final 4-act version and the original first act. Abbado did that for this one, following Giulini and Solti’s recordings in Italian. Abbado included most of the replaced music in an appendix.
The opening of Act IV is a highlight indeed - never fails to move. But there is also the Carlos-Posa duet earlier, and Posa’s death scene is brilliant.
Hvorostovky at the Cardiff Singer of the World contest:
Cheers
EJ
I support your Verdi(ct). My first music history helped a great deal to ruin his lessons by skipping massive pieces of music history and always returning to his centre of universe: Verdi. Sometimes we got a different Italian opera composer but I’m still recovering from his lessons.
Carlos Kleiber’s Bavarian State Orchestra ‘La Traviata’, from 1976/77 on two Deutsche Grammophon 180gm LPs, is second-to-none.
The cast includes Ileana Cotrubas as the tragic courtesan Violetta, and Plácido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes, as Germont père et fils. The Bavarian orchestra sounds authentically Italianate, and the supporting cast all seem to be native Italians. The set was originally boxed, but reissued in a gatefold sleeve in 2021.
Carlos Kleiber lived in Munich, and his years spent with the Bavarian State Opera was as close to a chief conductorship as he ever achieved.
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