Bill H wrote:

>I believe that if one looks at the circumstances involving their
>commission, symphonies Nos.  88-92 could also be considered "Paris"
>symphonies.

If this is the case, then I can also very much recommend Furtwaengler's
DG recording of no. 88 - maybe too slow for some tastes, but with a
wonderful rhythm and swing in the outer movements, and a very beautiful
slow movement.  The coupling is of course, the celebrated studio recording
of Schubert's C major symphony.  Indeed often highly suggestive and
eloquent, but I think this recording is more sectional, less convincing in
the transitions, than a live recording, also with the Berlin Philharmonic
in the early '50s, which I heard on radio a few years ago.  It may be on
a Music and Arts disc, coupled with the Unfinished Symphony, and is
definitely the most convincing performance of the work I have heard.  A
pity that it only now seems to have been discovered that the opening was in
fact meant to be in 2 rather than in 4 - which of course makes it far less
static and eliminates the exaggerated accelerando before the allegro proper
- nevertheless, no-one can beat F's horn-calls in the opening and later in
the slow movement.

Felix Delbruck
[log in to unmask]