This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head 20 Years pure Analogue What would Beethoven have thought of all this? I think he would have been quite excited by Hollywood, and would have gladly written music for the big screen. In his own time he wrote a lot of music for the theatre, and he was always short of money. And he would have been so good at it! As to this recording — I doubt any performance in his own time could have touched it. I also believe he would have been well pleased with Walter's interpretation, just as in the early twentieth century, Gustav Mahler delighted in Walter's performances of his own newly minted symphonies. This then is a truly wonderful performance. The greatness lies not in the perfection of the playing or the beauty of the sound, but in the realization of the composer's vision. Beethoven set out to change the world in this symphony, and Walter is with him all the way. Recordings of classical repertoire in the Fifties and Sixties were made during a time of technical development, which is hardly given a thought in our day with its global digitalisation and mass reproduction. To appreciate the improvement offered by analogue recording technology as opposed to a high-quality mono reproduction, one can do no better than listen to the present rendition of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. Bruno Walter and his handpicked Columbia Symphony Orchestra present this major orchestral work with its heroic, revolutionary character as a grand symphonic undertaking. Thanks to the new studio technology, Beethoven’s 'new path', and his daring experiment with musical form and content is revealed with previously unheard of depth and amplitude. Just how prudently Walter approaches the score is shown again and again in the highly detailed reconstruction and finely chiselled rendition of passages for small ensembles. Instead of depending upon brusque contrasts of the elements, Walter’s conducting concentrates on exposing the wealth of differing styles and tonality in the score. This strategy of balancing out the contrasts blazed a trail for today’s unremitting search for the much-heralded original sound. This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head. Recording: January 1958 at Legion Hall, Hollywood (CA)