It's amazing to return to Klemperer's Brahms some 40 years on and recall that, in his day, his performances were sometimes considered slow. After the unbelievably distended versions of conductors like Giulini and Bernstein (to say nothing of Celibidache), Klemperer sounds positively zippy. Actually, his Brahms never was in any way eccentric--just the opposite. This performance of the First Symphony, in fact, offers the very best of what we now think of as the classic "Germanic" approach: solid tempos, clear orchestral balances, and a performance that emphasizes the music's grandeur at the expense of some of its more intimate moments. There's nothing "pretty" about Klemperer's Brahms; it has all the emotional honesty of Shakespearean soliloquy, and if by the time this music is over you don't think that it's the greatest symphony ever written, you're probably tone deaf. Klemperer is that good. He's just as persuasive in the "Tragic" Overture, and his performance of the "Alto Rhapsody" with Christa Ludwig is widely regarded as the best ever recorded. If somehow in the past 40 years or so you haven't heard these incomparable performances, now's your chance.