s Bernstein to have been a great conductor of Beethoven depends, therefore, on which performance one has heard. It is difficult to say without qualification that Bernstein was a great conductor of Beethoven's music. But great music is always capable of submitting to different interpretations and no definitive version of any Beethoven work exists or ever will. As Lang said in reference to von Karajan's recordings of the Beethoven symphonies, once conductors stop re-interpreting these works "it will be the end of a living art of music" (Lang, 1964, p. 90). Thus it is safe to say, in view of his utter fearlessness and willingness to experiment across the range of possibilities, that Bernstein was always a great interpreter of the works and, therefore, he was sometimes a great conductor of Beethoven.
Bernstein's view of Beethoven's music was that valid interpretations fell between two extremes. At the one end was the literal, "rhythmically and dynamically accurate" approach to the score as written -- without alterations in orchestration and with no "gratuitous pauses or retardations or rubati, faithful even to the highly controversial (sometimes even impossible) metronomic markings" (Bernstein, 1982, p. 292). The other extreme was the intensely romanticized approach which drew on extramusical notions such as the "Formless Chaos" of the opening bars of the Ninth Symphony. In such a conception the conductor would employ "fermate, rubati, dynamic exaggerations and / or changes, vacillating tempi, poetical meanderings, and personal, subjective indulgences" (Bernstein, 1982, p. 292).
This range of possibilities was, of course, not limited to Beethoven's work. At a time when the predominant style of conducting leaned heavily toward the literal end of the scale, Bernstein was "essentially a throwback, a romantic" (Schonberg, 1967, p. 357). Yet he was capable of presenting renditions of Beethoven, and others, that swung violently t...