Wednesday, 5.7.08, 6:00 am
Aimez-vous Brahms? (Symphony No.1, op.68)
Library Building" posts are reviews of recordings I find to be essential to every good collection of classical music - recordings of interpretations that are the touchstone for their repertoire.
There is very little in any music that is universally liked – and classical music is no exception. Very few music lovers would dismiss Beethoven, though plenty listeners will confess difficulties with his late string quartets, for example. Mozart comes as close to universal adoration as possible, but his very popularity will make dismissing him more attractive. Glenn Gould toyed with this strained and self-conscious idiosyncrasy when he declared Mozart incapable of writing a good piano concerto and generally a bad composer. (Just earlier in April, Gould’s 40-minute Public Broadcasting Laboratory telecast “How Mozart Became a Bad Composer” was screened at the Paley Center in New York and Cinématheque Ontario in Toronto.)
Tchaikovsky, a favorite with nearly all, can cause a rash with those who claim his ballets saccharine and (a few of) his symphonies to be dripping with cloying, unchecked emotions in four out of four movements. A view that I can sympathize with. Brahms, finally, isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, either. New York Times and Washington Post critic Anne Midgette wrote an article called “The Allusionist” in which she admitted that, while “not … actually [finding Brahms’ music] odious”, she has trouble liking his music.
She’s not the only one, of course, to voice dislike or reservation about the music of Brahms, who was born today, 175 years ago in Hamburg. Notable in his dislike and incomprehension of Brahms was another birthday boy, Tchaikovsky – born today, 168 years ago. Tchaikovsky, who knew Brahms personally, thought him a “giftless, self-inflated mediocrity”. (At least Brahms wasn’t the sole victim of Tchaikovsky’s strong opinions: Wagner bored him, he found Handel fourth-rate, and Gluck’s creations “relatively poor, though not unattractive”.)
Brahms’ music is variously described as too academic or too emotional (a strange remark, that, by George Bernhard Shaw). Boston critic Philip Hale suggested Symphony Hall be named “Exit in case of Brahms”, Benjamin Britten and Hugo Wolf quipped devastatingly about Brahms. (Referencing Hale, Leonard Bernstein suggested that the anti-Brahms argument only continues among snobs.)
I myself can’t get the proper appreciation on Brahms’ string quartets, have very mixed feelings about much of the solo piano music, and find the d-minor Piano Concerto consisting of great music, but not being a great concerto. But there are many works that I do love. Most of the chamber music, unequivocally, and the symphonies. Following up on the question of how important exposition and repeat are in a classical work, I’d like to look at recordings –recent and not– of Brahms’ works that I deem meritorious, starting with the First Symphony.
Finished and premiered in 1876, when Brahms was already a seasoned and widely famous composer of 43 years, the First Symphony has a tortured 14-year history. The reason for this long period of gestation – Brahms’ self-doubts, the orchestral ‘trial balloons’ that came before it (Haydn Variations, Serenades, d-minor concerto), his insistence of only delivering a ‘finished’ masterpiece as his first symphony, and the looming shadow of Beethoven – are all factoids well enough known. The point is rather that he succeeded in creating four symphonies that are on a developmentally similar stage, great successes, and staples of the symphonic repertoire since their inception.
Self-aware of its dramatic stance, the first movement stomps away with strings driving one way and the pounding timpani going off in the other direction like an old steamer on the Danube. Best at bringing out the drama of ever diverging elements is undoubtedly Leonard Bernstein with the Vienna Philharmonic. I never owned this performance, recorded in 1981, on CD – and what I remembered wasn’t too exciting. Moreover, a DVD of Bernstein conducting the First and Third Symphony with the Israel Philharmonic (reviewed here) didn’t excite me much.
Watching and listening to the First Symphony now, on the DVD release on Deutsche Grammophon, I found myself positively surprised.
Even without hearing Bernstein’s charming introduction, his performance invokes a sense of piercing dread between the sweetly plucked and lyrical moments that the first movement all has to offer. When Bernstein takes the first movement repeat, he does it more than dutifully. His Brahms is broad, but it isn’t as heavy as I remembered. Of course, comparison to Christian Thielemann’s new recording (also on DG, more about which below), helps put Bernstein’s tempos – I – 17:40 (14:20, without repeat), II – 11:06, III – 5:40, IV – 19:29 – in perspective.
Like Bernstein’s, so is James Levine’s Brahms with the Vienna Philharmonic recorded live – and the playing is excellent in either case; a bit smoother for Levine. The Andante sostenuto is a miracle to the extent that Bernstein manages to sustain it at all over 11+ minutes, but remains legitimately contentious. I prefer Levine here, who certainly is not lacking breadth or sumptuousness, clocking in at a fairly conventional 9 ½ minutes. Indeed, in all but the last movement, the ‘broader-sounding-than-he-is’ Levine’s pace is the same or marginally quicker than the no-nonsense Szell (CBS/Sony, Cleveland Orchestra) and the propulsive Günter Wand (RCA, North German Radio Symphony Orchestra [NDRSO]).
If weighty Brahms at reasonable or “normal” tempos is your thing, Levine is among the uncontroversial top choices. Weightier still, and well possibly controversial, is one of the newest recordings, Christian Thielemann’s. It’s a live account from June of 2006 in which he manages what he hadn’t quite been able to do with his Bruckner 5th from two years before – he out-slows Sergiu Celibidache (EMI, also live, also with the Munich Philharmonic). This recording opens with an excellent Egmont Overture (Beethoven) that fits into the high-romantic dress very well: the juxtaposition of noble breadth and gentle power, supported by thundering timpani rolls, convey something of the “firestorm of burning passion” that the SZ-reviewer of the live performance heard.
The Brahms, alas, is of questionable merit. If you like Brahms as a weighty bully, a juggernaut of a romantic symphony, there is much you will find to enjoy in the sumptuous playing of the Munich Philharmonic. Less so, for anyone else. Timings cannot convey everything – sometimes nothing. But here the impression of the ear is in accordance with the numbers. Consider Thielemann’s 14:33 for the first movement – and that’s without the repeat that Thielemann does take.
Some moments sound threatening and lumbering, but on the upside the transitions are well cared for, the voices are developed organically out of the material, and the brass chorale after a good four minutes into the fourth movement (in the Più andante from “C” onward) is every bit as touching as it should be. But the dynamics are, surprisingly, narrower than wide, and the sound rich but not ideally clear. It’s a performance I would have loved to be at in concert and a recording I’d love had I been. As it is, I admire much in it and move on, largely unmoved.
Speaking of unmoved: Wolfgang Sawallisch, a Kapellmeister I much admire, sees his 1991 Brahms First with the London Philharmonic Orchestra re-issued for the umpteenth time. This time again on EMI (the cycle has also been licensed to Brilliant Classics) on their “3” series. Packaged like this, at super-budget price, it’s a good investment for the Schicksalslied, Tragic-, and Academic Festival Overtures, and the Haydn Variations that are also included – but the symphonies, including the First, don’t rise far above the capable and adroit. (Sawallisch, unsurprisingly, does not include the first movement repeat.)
Apart from Thielemann and Celibidache, the Munich Philharmonic has also recorded the Brahms First with James Levine (live on Oehms Classics, which I haven’t heard), and live with Günter Wand on Hänssler Profil. Coupled with a very fine Beethoven First Symphony from 1994, Wand’s autumnal 1997 Brahms does not enthuse me greatly. A rather slow performance, it lacks the tension and energy to navigate the longueurs without sagging. For the extended line, Thielemann, Bernstein, and Celibidache offer more, even in their exaggeration. But most unfavorable is the comparison of Wand with himself from 1983 with the NDRSO.
From the introduction to the last note, this ‘83 recording is the most energetic and propulsive recording I know, with unfailing momentum and excitement. It compares well to the rightfully classic Szell and the somewhat overrated, though equally classic, Toscanini (RCA, NBC Symphony Orchestra). It isn’t so much a fast performance (the fast movements are actually slower than with Levine) as it is a quickening one. The tempi, even within the movements, are between similar and identical with Szell, no note is ever caught slacking, everything is played ‘on the toes’. The slow second and fourth movements benefit from the pace by presenting the music as if unquestionably cut from one cloth.
No Brahms First has yet surpassed Wand in my estimation – but one that came awfully close is Marek Janowski’s with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The first installment of a new Brahms cycle on Pentantone SACDs, it demonstrates how good it is to have this orchestra recording regularly again. (With Baltimore on Naxos, Philadelphia on Ondine, Cleveland and LA on DG, Chicago on its own label, and Minnesota on BIS, the American orchestra recording scene –all but dead a few years ago– is revived again, proving the gloomy naysayers wrong.)
Marek Janowski’s Brahms is a swift kick in the rear of many Brahms recordings out there. “Swift” is to be taken literally. At 15:10 his first movement takes not much longer with the repeat than Thielemann’s without. He is faster in every movement than any other of the above mentioned conductors and yet he scarcely sounds rushed. It’s refreshing Brahms to hear, and should be so far away from the accusations of tediousness that even anti-Brahmsians might find here what they need to love Brahms a little, after all. The coupling with first-rate Haydn Variations op.56a and superb sound makes this disc an auspicious start of a 21st century Brahms cycle.
