American Record Guide‘s Gil French has a thorough review of his multiple listens through Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven Symphony No. 9 recording:
“the riches, most superbly tuned strings basses I have heard since Joseph Guastafeste led the Chicago Symphony’s string bass section (1961-2011) and better recorded as well! When the entire orchestra joins in [in the Finale], their phrasing reflects the words mentally engrained in anyone familiar with the text. Continue with the first major vocal section, and Honeck truly does put the orchestra’s colors, phrasing, and accents at the service of the text—not subordinate to it, but concentrating our attention on it. Glorious engineering helps. Enter the rich contrabassoon, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, timpani, and orchestra with that Turkish march at an exhilarating clip. The punchy rhythms persist through soloists and chorus into an exuberant orchestral fugue. Honeck, shifting on a dime, flows into “Seid umschlungen millionen!” —another fugue, this time with full chorus—and a coda that, given the integral arc he has woven from the start, is so charged with “god-fire” and “sparks” and an embrace of millions and a kiss for the whole world that, after the final note, I felt an electric wave in my brain just behind my eyes that did cause tears and that choking feeling—not weeping or merely being “filled up” but a power transmitted to me by Beethoven and the forces on this recording (including the engineers).”
—Gil French, American Record Guide