Random thoughts prompted by my comment to
krblack back here:
It's always been my goal some day to learn the words to the Ode to Joy so I can sing along.
Some number of years ago, I went through a period of trying out different complete sets of recordings of Beethoven's symphonies. I think I still have 4 of them. It's not even like I could tell you or am even aware from memory of differences between conductors' styles, so this is worse than being a hipster, it's being a poseur hipster, but still.
I have yet to find a set that does the 5th, 7th, and 9th all the way I like them.[1] In each case the tempo of the 4th movement is probably what I'm most sensitive to, and I generally find that one or more of them is too slow for my liking.
In this day and age it seems like there should be a tool available to me to rip a recording and then adjust the tempo to suit. Without altering the pitch is the tricky part I guess.[2] Even better would be a virtual conductor thing where you can futz not only with things like tempo and dynamics but also instrumentation.
[1] Those are the ones I feel strongly about anyway; I suppose I have some ideas about the 6th, and I don't really care so much about the other 5.
[2] Speaking of which (I thought for sure I'd blogged this before but can't find it via the beethoven tag) in
this older episode of Radio Lab they spend some time talking about
9 Beet Stretch, which sounds like it'd be really neat to listen to some day. Unfortunately the Googleable links to download it are all dead, and there is a tantalizing reference to a DVD version that can't be found anywhere. Near as I can tell the only way to listen to it currently (other than traveling to the very occasional live presentation) is via streaming download (it plays on a continuous loop), but I have thus far encountered significant OCD resistance to starting it in the middle.