Both outstanding recordings and justly recognized references. I'm glad you mentioned the Krips/LSO, which has been my personal reference for a great many years.

I adore the Munch, love the Krips, and I've forgotten if I've ever heard the Szell. I guess I'm going to have to rummage around in the big Szell box and give it a listen. It sounds like I'm in for an experience. Thanks Dave for the reminder!

I like to thank Dave for all the lovely moments that I've spend discovering the world of classical music that I didn't know about yet. Next to the Legion d'Honneur he really deserves an Oscar too. I'm buying myself a Krips version this time 🥳

My go-to for a long time had been Blomstedt and the San Francisco Symphony. Great recording, but I need some more interpretations to truly appreciate the piece. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction again!

Canadian orchestral musicians (especially tendinitis-stricken string players) often refer to the piece as the Great C Monster...^^

As a young college (music) student, I had to learn this piece for my music history class & it blew me away....fell deeply in love with it❤ I'm a Tuba player, and no tuba in Shubert, but I still love it deeply 😂

Szell is my fav for so many things, including D. 944. He brings balance and musicality, as you said, with fiery intensity. The 1st and 4th movt codas do not disappoint. But the conductor I grew up on for D. 944 was Bruno Walter (Columbia). Perhaps not the "reference" as per your definition, but somehow he captures more of the lyricism of Schubert without losing too much of the sharpness. His tempi are a bit more laconic, but it all feels perfectly natural. No damn repeats, either! That's my vote for underappreciated gem of Schubert symphonies.

Szell is the one. The very first one 9th I ever heard way back when. Then came Munch who almost caught up on RCA so I now have both. I really love this symphony.

Back in my LP days, I had two recordings of Schubert's 9th by Arturo Toscanini both on RCA. One was with The NBC Symphony and the other was with The Philadelphia Orchestra. Unfortunately I lived at a seashore community back then and a major flood destroyed most of my LP collection. At present in my CD collection, I have Leonard Bernstein and The New York Philharmonic doing Schubert's 9th with cuts on SONY and a version with all the repeats featuring The Chamber Orchestra Of Europe with Claudio Abbado conducting on DG. I'm happy with them even if they are not reference recordings. Thanks Dave... Forgot to mention I no longer live by the ocean. I traded it in for the mountains of Pennsylvania.

My "dark horse" in this piece has for a long time has been Thomas Schippers and the Cincinnati Symphony who brought such an individual approach to anything he conducted

Krips recorded it with the Concertgebouw Orch. for Decca in the early '50's - also wonderful.

Did not know the Munch so I cued up the 3rd and 4th movements and just loved it. Munch is a combination of brilliant musical conception and almost ecstatic emotion, really exciting. Orchestra needs to buckle their seatbelts, it is going to be fast and loud, thanks goodness the Boston Symphony of the time was so good.

For once, I enjoy the sweet balm of joining the Consensus Club. My reference triptych for this work, available for triangulation of the relative position of other performances, consists of: Szell, Furtwängler and Krips. These three performances each embody distinct aspects of the work: Szell's classisistic approach with ever so subtle gradations of tempo and timbre; Furtwängler's free agogics and forward, romantic propulsion; last, but not at all least, Krips' wonderful recording with the LSO, by some likened to a relaxed, joyous stroll through a very Viennese park on a pleasantly warm, sunny day without a trace of worry or care on the horizon!

Again a nice review. I love the Szell. Maybe not a reference Recording but worth to listen is the Great with Enoch zu Guttenberg and the Orchester Klangverwaltung, recorded in Munich 2015.

I couldn’t agree more regarding those two references which I would complete with two versions that I also enjoy very much: Bruno Walter/New York and Harnoncourt/Chamber Orchestra of Europe (on ICA Classics).

I also love Toscanini’s performance with the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

The Great C Major Symphony is fun to play for the trombones.

Sad that the Krips recording never seemed to stay in print for very long on CD. Eloquence released it coupled with his VPO "Unfinished" in 2011, but that is now OOP on CD (thankfully available to stream!).

First one I got many years ago on LP was Szell, by years ago I mean 1960 maybe +_. He made it sound like a great symphony. It has been my favorite since. I always thought Schubert would have been thrilled to hear it!

By coincidence BBC Radio 3 in the UK reviewed this symphony last week on Record Review and their recommendation was Harnoncourt with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Interesting.

I love to hear that about Munch! I've got the Szell and treasure it, but Munch is more my style...'big picture'. Plus the 'Great' was the first I saw performed live.

Absolutely right about the repeats… and I love the piece! It’s a brutally hard piece to balance and pace… I particularly don’t like overly slow Andantes…- it’s a classic “Schubert walking song…”

Looks like Decca released (at least on Apple Music) Krip's version with London. They must have heard you, Dave 😂🎉

I love Munch’s take on it. In fact, I didn’t like the 9th until I heard his recording. He converted me to it. I’ll have to listen to Szell’s and compare.

Adrian Boult's live performance on BBC Legends series has to be near the top version.

I completely agree with everything in this video, the trickiness of the piece, how no modern recording has matched Szell, etc. It's a shame that the EMI/Warner recording is so hard to find, because it's interpretively identical to the CBS/Sony version -- it's actually crazy how similar the interpretations are -- but the EMI/Warner much better sound. I had the Sony version first in college, but I hated the sound quality, and then scoured other recordings for years but none of them did quite right by this tricky piece, until eventually I found... Szell again, just with better sound.

You can never go wrong with a George Szell recording anyway. As Mr Hurwitz himself wrote in his review of the big Sony Szell box: « Pull out any disc at random. Chances are you’ll be holding a reference recording for the work in question. »😉

When you talk about 2 reference recordings it's motivating to go to listen to both of them and compare. And If I had to pick one, for the Sibelius 2 you mentioned I would pick Barbirolli/Royal Phil out of the 2, but for the Schubert's Great C major - I would pick Szell/Cleveland. I think it's because the symphonies are stylistically different, Schubert is more stately and majestic, while Sibelius turns out great in a more romantic, less disciplined approach.

Krips is my fave, but I’m a sucker for that delicious Decca-London sound (analog vinyl guy). I’ll revisit Szell and Munch thanks to Dave. I love the Bruno Walter too, but I bet many think it’s too slow, sensitive and ‘melty,’ as Toscanini might’ve put it 😂

I feel like there may be some truth to the idea that various brilliant composers worked themselves to death. Imagine the masterpieces that were to come from Schubert, Mozart, Bizet, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Bellini, Donizetti. And what Rossini could have produced had he not retired for decades after overworking himself. Perhaps we wouldn't have gotten many of the masterpieces we did from these composers had they not worked themselves to the bone! Yet why is it that Baroque and early classical composers lived relatively long lives, especially for their time and considering how much they toiled churning out gobs of music? Purcell and Pergolesi are the only "greats" who spring to mind as dying prematurely.

Munch's is the first version I heard and is my "reference" recording (not my favorite - that's Skrowaczewski on Mercury).

A composer friend of mine suggested that the Great C Major suggested that had he lived Schubert would have been the proto-Mahler....very long symphonies...based in lieder....i can hear that in the C Major.....have played it in very good festival orchestras and dont much like it!~

My two ex aequo reference recordings are Szell and Vegh

I've always gone back to Furtwangler with the Berlin Phil, surprisingly (well, is it?) brilliant. However off I went and listened to the Munch and Szell. I'd take the Furtwangler over the Munch, but I just love, love, love the Szell. The balance is so great that I heard sections that I've never heard before, especially in the brass. I really like this series and look forward to more discoveries.

I agree that the Scherzo shouldn't be the longest movement, but Berwald was very specific with the duration when it came his own symphonies even though he only heard one of them. Schubert must have estimated the duration of the various movements?

I couldn't agree more about Szell: BBC aside (😉), I still see it recommended as a recording of reference by reviewers at various websites. Munch not so much, though that is more than likely because I am not as familiar with past literature. Personally I think he does go too far with his reorchestration; it isn't just the first movement coda. Throughout the work he doubles woodwind parts with the trumpets, creating a much brighter sound than I suspect Schubert intended. Even though he never heard the work performed, Schubert certainly knew what a trumpet sounded like and what impact it would have on the overall sound of the work. And he definitely seems to be aiming for the tune to have a darker, mellower sound in the first movement coda--Wand, Bernstein, Blomstedt, Klemperer and countless others all show that if you simply double the winds and adjust the dynamics the coda can be a thrilling conclusion to the mvt without the brass band effect.

I agree wholeheartedly about the Szell/Cleveland recording (the first one). It's my go-to performance. What do you think of the recording with MacKerras and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment? That was on a 2-disc set with Symphonies 5 and 8 (using the version of the 8th completed by Brian Newbold). It was first released on the Virgin "Veritas" label but has been since reissued on Erato (both now owned by Warner). I remember hearing it and thinking that his observing the exposition repeat in the Finale made the entire movement seem a bit overblown (but still exciting). I originally thought that there was an additional repeat near the Coda that MacKerras observes, but on listening to the recording again I find that I was mistaken. Nevertheless, the entire symphony in this recording lasts 59:35, with the Scherzo taking 13:41 and the Finale 15:25! Were you by any chance thinking of this recording when you mentioned how some performances can take nearly an hour? MacKerras recorded the 8th and 9th again for Telarc with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and, if I understand correctly, a third time with the Philharmonia Orchestra. The Telarc recording, however, features the standard edition of the "Unfinished". In both recordings of the 8th, IIRC, he observes the 1st-movement exposition repeat. In the Telarc 9th, the Scherzo clocks in at just 9:45, while the Finale is 26 seconds faster. (BTW, I'm not sure why the timings I listed are being hyperlinked. Maybe KZfaq does that automatically?)

If there are two Furtwangler recordings from the standard symphonic reportoire that might considered reference, one should be one of two Brahms 1 candidates, and the second should be his Schubert 9 -- the 1951 Berlin Phil performance on DG. Does it not belong on a reference list?

I don't disagree, although the Krips has always been my favorite. But the 1951 Furtwängler has achieved legendary status throughout the decades, and I really thought that would be the reference recording. Toscanini/Philadelphia also got a lot of praise as well.

On these things, I get, having watched your previous discussions of this, that these are the recordings you find most valuable But there’s no consensus on this more broadly so I admire the advocacy, but I don’t think you can claim these as the “references” on previous criteria (they’re not the recordings we like most) I don’t think there are “reference” recordings for this work, for a number of reasons, including the difficulty of the finale and the problems in doing the scherzo. That I can’t offer one is actually quite good I think.

Regarding period instruments, I think you are right about Schubert, and I think applies also to Beethoven and many others. The reason that instruments evolve is that the needs of composers are sometimes constrained by the instruments that exist in their times. I can't stand early Monteverdi on anything but period instruments, but Schuetz sometimes sounds robbed by them, for example, in my opinion. And if Norrington's recording of Symphonie Fantastique is useful for anything but a coffee coaster, it is to prove that period instruments make the music indecipherable.

The combination of intellect and musicality has yet to be duplicated, and TCO is, in many respects, still his orchestra. Dohnanyi and FWM have burnished the sound but it’s still GZ’s band. Interested to hear what you think of the recent FWM-C O recording

Sorry to ask, but what date is the Szell? Is it the 1970 recording made just before his death? I see earlier ones available with Szell and Cleveland (eg, 1957, which might be stereo). If I missed the year in the video, my apologies.

please review the new mahler 6 by rattle!!

The only other potential contender is Bohm/BPO (1963). Constantly in circulation and generally highly regarded.

The very ending chord of the Symphony was originally written as with a quite ending I believe? The Boston Symphony Orchestra had the late great Vic Firth playing timpani. I had his signature timpani mallets myself

The observation about late Schubert being not of his time is on target; example D960 Sonata in B flat

Do we need a Krips Box?

Tell this to the BBC who just named their reference recording!

Good, Mr. Hurwitz! How about Szell's EMI 1970 recording ?

Somewhat off topic, Karajan recorded this piece three times : 1947; 1969 (perversely overgroomed) and 1979--this last one direct but almost brutal and impatient. After that he declared that the piece had defeated him and he was done with it. Perhaps he felt obligated to show up Furtwangler, and failed.

I enjoy a non European reference for such great symphony

If ever there was a work that a conductor should make major cuts in, this is it. They have no problem butchering Tchaikovsky 5, Rachmaninoff 2, Scheherazade and more, but oh no, you can't cut Schubert or Beethoven! I loath playing it and never listen at home.