It takes a lot of listening for a performance to sink in. When Klemperer's
Mahler 9th came out, I (VP of the LA Mahler Society) was inviteds, with a
few others, by Bill Malloch to express my listening evaluation on the
radio. Well, I didn't like it, and said so.
However, a year or so later I took a copy home and was mortified to find my
opinion exactly reversed as I listened to it again and again.
I haven't heard Barenboim's Beethoven, but experience has taught me not to
trust my own initial evaluations. Or anybody else's!
Bill S