Should a superior source ever turn up of Bruno Walter’s 1948 New York Philharmonic broadcast performance of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis (a work he never recorded commercially), it would prove infinitely more valuable than this strident, distorted, ill-balanced specimen. Its sonics are lousy enough to even make the problematic Erich Kleiber/Stockholm Missa solemnis sound like an audiophile disc. You can’t even get a true sense of Walter’s tempo relationships because Urania’s pitching is inconsistent between movements. Just about all you can infer through the mangy crackle is that the soloists are not on their finest fettle, while the Philharmonic seems to be standing on firmer, more disciplined ground than their relatively ragged (and better sounding) 1953 broadcast under Dimitri Mitropoulos. Unless you crave every scrap of sound that emanated from Bruno Walter’s genial, knowing baton, save your hard-earned gelt and leave this dog alone.
