All conductors have their hits and misses, but of all the great conductors who recorded (and rerecorded) tons of standard repertoire, I can’t think of anyone whose quotient of hits was higher than Bernstein’s. Although he’s best remembered for Mahler, Copland, his own music, and a handful of others (Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky), he also was a superb conductor of the Viennese classical repertoire long before his Deutsche Grammophon contract and connections with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra gave his publicists cause to highlight this aspect of his talents. His Sony recordings of Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, and Haydn not only rank with the best, but even the naturally grainy sound of the New York Philharmonic in this music has come to sound far more naturally appealing, given what authentic instrument groups have been offering over the past decades. These two Schubert performances are uniformly excellent: Bernstein’s DG remakes with the Concertgebouw might have slightly better sound and a more “cultured” orchestral veneer, but they are not more exciting or more idiomatic. There isn’t a dead moment anywhere in either work, and when you’re talking about Schubert’s Ninth, especially, that’s saying a lot. Try these performances, and get to know a side of Bernstein the existence of which you may never have suspected.
