Charles Munch’s Schubert Ninth is my personal favorite performance. It is unbelievably exciting, with the orchestra playing as if its collective life depended on it. No other version of the scherzo even comes close to this one for sheer rhythmic energy, and while the finale may not be the subtlest interpretation on disc, it’s probably the most physical. Only at the end of the first movement (nearly always rescored in some fashion) does Munch let the brass go crazy in a way that some listeners may find over the top–but then the basic problem here is of Schubert’s own making, and if this is vulgar, then it’s healthy vulgarity. The “Unfinished” is scarcely less fine. Of course, it’s a more elegiac piece to begin with, but Munch shows that darkness needn’t preclude drama, and the orchestral winds positively glow in the Andante (as they also would a couple of decades later under Jochum). SACD remastering (in two and three tracks) has polished up the already very good sound so that it sounds particularly fresh. This is one of the true “desert island” classics.
