The Solti/CSO M5 performance was in Davies Hall sometime in the latter 80's or early 90's, and it was THE WORST orchestral performance of anything I've ever heard in which the vast majority of the notes were still in the right place at the right time. The entire orchestra sounded as though it were at war with itself from beginning to end, and Solti kept his headed buried in the score for much of the time. There appeared to be zero connection between Solti and his players. I didn't even know that there had been a string section present until we reached the Adagietto - lo and behold: strings!
The timpanist sounded terrible; the cymbal player used about five different pairs of cymbals, and they all sounded like the wrong ones; Gordon Peters consistently underplayed the bass drum; the tam-tam was consistently underplayed; Dale Clevenger's dynamic range went from mezzoforte to ffff! (solo horn) - everything just sounded awful, except for the strings during the Adagietto. To make matters worse, they played some totally un-listenable modern monstrosity during the first half.
