Three record companiesVictor, London and Westminsterwent to market on the same sustained D minor last week: Beethoven's hour-long Ninth Symphony.
For those who like crisp, musical perfection, Victor's Toscanini version is the last word. The NBC Symphony gives the music all the urgency it can bear, a sweeping flow and contrasting moments of intimacy hard to match. But the choral finaleone of the music's worst bugaboos seems imperfectly recorded: the Robert Shaw Chorale clears the vocal hurdles all right, but the part singing is sometimes cloudy.
The most satisfying finale on records is in...
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