I posted this over at the R3 board, but nobody bit. So, I was recently picked up his disc of the 5th symphony with the San Francisco Symphony. I'd been wondering for some time if I was unfairly neglecting these, so when I happened upon this disc, I finally took the plunge. The result was more than a little disappointing. A rather long reading (though not with the compensations that, say, Bernstein's final reading has). I found it rather dull and lacklustre. The sound quality of the recording is really rather poor (I know champion recordings with awful sound, but that is when the performance outweighs the limitations, which I don't feel it does here, what's more, when the recording is old this is forgivable but in this day and age, the sort of harshness evidenced on this disc really ought to be a things of the past).

As always, I imagine there will be people who disagree with me and who like the recording, but I'm just a little curious as to how typical this reading is of the rest of the cycle - in other words, is it worth looking (or rather listening) into some of his other efforts?

The 1st is the best of the lot so far - fresh and youthfull - but they are all a little shiny, glittery and not very deep.

By coincidence, am just back from San Francisco where I heard the orchestra, albeit under Charles Dutoit. For what it's worth, I was pretty impressed by them in general, but found the overall impression was of a homogenised and overly slick orchestral sound and style (and this in a programme of Ravel, Beethoven and Strauss!) I heard MTT's 5th and compared to Barbirolli or Abbado's recordings, it didn't do much for me.