Stephen Bacher said he had problems with Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and the
last movement of the 9th symphony:

I can't comment on the Mass - I've heard it only once and remember being
very impressed by individual parts, but I can hardly say I 'know' it.  As
regards the finale of the symphony, I used to feel the same way as you do
but have since changed my mind.  Particularly from a German perspective,
this movement belongs to that group of works which, after the war and
the Nazi period, is difficult to approach without embarrassment - the
big-hearted, mass-movement idealism ('be embraced, you millions', the
lusty male chorus singing to a military beat, etc, all that has tainted
associations and needs to be re-learnt from the beginning, so to speak.
More basically, I've never much liked Schiller's text and much of the music
can easily appear banal, too 'folksy' and straightforward after the depths
and conflicts of the first 3 movements.  And the quoting from earlier
movements is a device which has been re-used so frequently since Beethoven
that it sounds hackneyed, even though it wasn't at the time.  What in the
end converted me was Furtwangler's recording from Lucerne in 1954 (this is
important - *not* the 1951 recording from Bayreuth).  He really believes
in the movement's 'message' and can transmit that belief; he makes the
orchestral recitative and the quotations make sense; the 'Seid umschlungen,
Millionen' section has an awesome grandeur about it, and the big fermatas
just before the final race to the finish, where the choir goes into the
stratospheres, have such a mystical intensity that they seem to transfigure
all the previous sections of the finale, retrospectively lifting the entire
movement onto the level of the other three - or even above them.  And
then the final prestissimo, where the music just sort of whizzes into
nothingness - well, that's the sort of experience that can make you go
unhinged if you're not careful.  I'm aware that my prose is becoming
purple, but once you've listened to the recording, you won't blame me.
Try to get it!

Felix Delbruck
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