Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (Lucerne Festival Historic Performances)

Wilhelm Furtwängler’s last-ever performance of the Ninth, captured live at the Lucerne Festival in 1954, three months before his death, is one of unbridled intensity. Just listen to the brass and cellos give their all in the opening to the final movement, before Furtwängler leads the Lucerne Festival Orchestra to a tumultuous climax, vocal soloists including the magisterial bass-baritone Otto Edelmann and a huge Festival Chorus thunderously, exultantly declaiming Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” Yet, arguably, it’s the Adagio that steals the show—Brucknerian in scope, transcendent in its expansive beauty. This is a performance as visionary as any you could hear.