I’ve never been very good at noticing differences in performances of classical pieces and picking a favorite. Occasionally one really jumps out, like the Zurich Tonhalle’s recording of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, but usually the differences are subtle. It takes careful listening even to notice that there are differences. As an exercise, I picked out four recordings of a piece I know well and listened to them repeatedly to compare them. There really are differences.

The piece I picked was Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3. The recordings were:

• Herbert von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic on Karajan 1980s/3 from DG.
• George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra on George Szell conducts Beethoven Symphonies 1-9 & Overtures.
• Wilhelm Furtwängler with the Vienna Philharmonic on Wartime Recordings from DG.
• Georg Solti with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Wagner: Overtures & Preludes from Decca. The Beethoven piece is on there in spite of the title.

Karajan

All of these recordings hold good performances. The Furtwängler is from the 1940s and doesn’t have nearly the sound quality of the others, but the performance is worth hearing.

Karajan’s approach is on the extroverted, even noisy side. He allows the brass and tympani to let loose. It’s not a vulgar performance, but it’s more assertive than any of the others. Some of the details are harder to hear. The tempi are close to average among these performances.

The trumpet call is a conspicuous feature, and there are multiple ways to treat it. It’s marked “Auf dem Theater,” which I think means “out in the theater, not on the stage” in this context. In this overture, as in the opera, the call is repeated. In the opera, there’s a direction that the second call sounds nearer. (Presumably it’s relaying the call of a trumpet out on the tower.) The overture doesn’t have any direction to that effect, but it makes sense. On the other hand, that means having two offstage trumpets in different locations. In Karajan’s recording, the trumpet sounds distant, and the volume is the same both times.

If I’d bought this recording, I wouldn’t complain, but it’s not my favorite among the four. I like a bit more subtlety.

Szell

Szell’s recording is in the middle of the road, at least within this group. Or maybe it sounds that way to me because I had a recording of Szell’s performance and heard it repeatedly long before hearing any of the others. It has the shortest playing time of the set, perhaps because he takes the tempo of the main section just slightly faster than the others. The trumpet call isn’t very far off.

The score says that at the start of the Presto ending just “2 or 3 violins” should play. I can’t tell if any of the recordings observe this request.

This is a safe choice, at least for me.

Furtwängler

The Furtwängler recording has the longest play time of these four. He takes the introduction very slowly and expressively. To make up for it, he takes the final Presto faster than everyone else. (Anyone who’s heard his recording of Beethoven’s 9th won’t be surprised by that.) Within the main body, he uses a bit more rubato than the others.

The trumpet is off in the distance both times.

While I don’t consider myself an audiophile, a recording that’s conspicuously short of modern standards gets in the way of my enjoyment. Not only is this one limited by the technology of the 1940s, it probably suffered from wartime restrictions on equipment and schedules. I’m glad to have heard it, but if I could have only one recording of the Leonore No. 3, this wouldn’t be it.

Solti

Solti’s recording is strong on controlled excitement and clarity. There’s a run of 64th notes in the introduction; that’s fast even at an Adagio tempo. Solti’s recording is the only one where I can make out the separate notes. It helps that he takes the introduction slowly and expressively, though it’s not quite as slow as Furtwängler’s. This recording is the only one that makes the second trumpet call louder than the first. Throughout the overture, the trumpets in the orchestra attack strongly and then diminish in volume, giving them strength without obscuring the other parts.

I’m declaring the Solti recording the winner. It has strength, expression, clarity, restraint where it’s needed, and decent sound quality. Don’t take this too seriously as a recommendation; it’s a practice run for me, showing my thinking when I try to compare recordings. If there’s a lesson in this post, it’s that not all recordings of a classical piece are identical, and you can notice the differences and pick your favorites with careful listening. Listening carefully is a habit worth cultivating, when there is so much pressure to hear music without paying attention.