Being a real late bloomer (kind of just found out/realized the classical piece in Clockwork orange is this piece). Anyways, i searched on wikipedia, and noticed there are several notible versions, and many are around an hour and 15 minutes long. I did a brief look on youtube, and found that i really liked pt 1 and pt 4. So i was wondering which version is consitered best (on cd) or is it more subtle differences then anything between the versions.
thanks
oh and these 2 parts in particular
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I'm not sure what your question is. Which version/recording should you buy?

You can't go wrong with von Karajan, but the definitive version of this is usually considered Furtwangler at Bayreuth. I have several recordings myself.

My personal favorite:



http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Symp...5110164&sr=1-2

I like the version that closed Die Hard

I have that one.

A bit of background info on why audio CDs hold as much music as they do:

http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~im.../beethoven.htm

My personal favorite is John Eliot Gardiner with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Just a beautiful sounding recording, with a surprising amount of punch and (dare I say) aggression (when needed) that really makes this recording soar. I know he has his detractors, but I love his recordings.