Orality and Beethoven

I got my son a new CD of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. For years now he's been listening to the 9th on a Tonie I made for him from the mp3s of the 9th on my computer. I couldn't pretend to know anything about the recordings of either the CD or the mp3/Tonie. The CD says Placido Domingo sings on it. I recognize the name obviously but I know far more about Betty from OPERA than him (her mom was a sadist), and I pretty much loathe the culture of using people's names as some kind of shorthand for a subject you know nothing about ("Who are you, Albert Einstein?" / "Who are you, Richard Petty?" / "Who are you, John Holmes?"). But what I do know is that the recording on the CD is maybe at 95% of the speed of the other. The second movement, the one Alex loves in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, the one that would play in Barnes & Noble when I worked there 30 years ago, simply plods, like it's crawling, like I've huffed freon. The notes are all correct, but the conductor has them lumbering along. I've seen the 9th performed 4 or 5 times (a few standouts are at Dorothy Chandler in LA with Leonard Nimoy on stage for the whole first movement (he had been doing a spoken word accompaniment to the opening piece), in the Madeleine church in Paris on New Year's Eve, and last summer with my son in Wichita). It is torturous to listen to a recording at this speed. It manipulates my expectations. Like tripping over something in my own home. But it would only have that effect on someone who knew it well. I've conservatively heard at least the first 2 movements in the range of 800 times. I'm reading a book, ORALITY AND LITERACY right now that distinguishes between the sense of whether a piece spoken aloud is repeated verbatim each time it is performed. And the finding was that far more often the repeated performances have minor variations. There is no text for an oral culture to compare the performance to and by the time the performance has taken place it is just as quickly gone forever. I'm curious as I'm sitting here in the dark with my son, if it is my literate mind, that vaguely understands the way music is written down, that is irritated with the variation of speed. Or, in a slightly different way of looking at it, whether any of those live performances, had they been at a slightly different tempo, would have been apparent to me as someone not from a culture or mind that can be present in the moment for an ephemeral performance and feel that it is a one of one without any compositional forethought.