This recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is relatively uncommon. It was recorded in Berlin on 17 April 1929 (1st and 2nd movements) and 3 June 1929 (3rd and 4th movements). Parlophone's recording techniques obviously left something to be desired. The first session has some problems with hum. In the case of the second, the sound is very curious indeed: around 3dB louder than the first session, with a harsh, wiry top and very little bass response. I have tried to compensate for this as much as possible, but I can't restore what isn't there, nor can I do a great deal to minimise the effects of the heavy wear on the last three sides that results from the high recording level used.

There are probably other recordings of the Symphony where the final movement is taken at the same hectic pace as Rosenstock, but this is the fastest I can recall - and I'm personally not convinced by the choice of tempo!

The movements are:

00:00 First Movement
07:27 Second Movement
17:14 Third Movement
21:53 Fourth Movement

From Wikipedia: Joseph Rosenstock (27 January 1895 in Kraków – 17 October 1985 in New York) was an American conductor.

He worked at the State Theatre in Darmstadt...and at the State Opera in Wiesbaden... He was brought into the Metropolitan Opera in New York City to replace Artur Bodanzky in 1928. However, he received such poor critical reviews that he himself resigned after only six performances and Bodanzky was brought back.

Returning to Germany, he worked in Mannheim and, from 1933–1936, as conductor of the Berlin Jüdischer Kulturbund, notably conducting the (all-Jewish) German premiere of Verdi's Nabucco on 4 April 1935.

Rosenstock left Berlin in 1936 and moved to Japan to conduct the Japan Symphony Orchestra (which had been founded in 1926 and became the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 1951). He remained in Tokyo until 1946 and while he was there he taught Hideo Saito (Conductor, educator and co-founder of the Toho Gakuen School of Music) and Masashi Ueda (Conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, who introduced contemporary Russian, American and Japanese music to the public), and Roh Ogura how to conduct Beethoven's symphonies.

In 1948 Rosenstock returned to New York to work as a conductor with the New York City Opera (NYCO), debuting with Le Nozze di Figaro. In 1951 he notably conducted the world premieres of David Tamkin's The Dybbuk.

In January 1952 Rosenstock succeeded Laszlo Halász as General Director of the NYCO. He served in that post for four seasons, continuing Halász's innovative programming of unusual repertoire mixed with standard works. He notably led the world premiere of Aaron Copland's The Tender Land, the New York premiere of William Walton's Troilus and Cressida, and the United States premieres of Gottfried von Einem's The Trial and Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. Rosenstock was also the first NYCO director to include musical theatre in the company's repertoire with a 1954 production of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's Show Boat. This decision was ridiculed by the Press but Rosenstock felt justified as the production played to a packed house. Meanwhile, the company's production of Donizetti's opera Don Pasquale that season only sold 35 percent of the house seats.

Rosenstock returned to the Met on 31 January 1961 to conduct Tristan und Isolde and became a regular member of the Met conducting staff until his last performance conducting Die Meistersinger on 13 February 1969. During those eight years, he conducted 248 performances at the Metropolitan Opera, including a number of Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast performances.

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