Brahms's Symphony No 3
Claudio Abbado's Berlin Brahms Third
Introduction
The conductor Hans Richter liked to describe this as Brahms's 'Eroica': 'It repeats neither the poignant song of Fate of the First, not the joyful idyll of the Second. Its fundamental note is proud strength that rejoices in deeds'. Some say this is the greatest of the four symphonies; the third movement is surely the loveliest.
Gramophone Choice
Symphony No 3
Coupled with Tragic Overture. Schicksalslied
Ernst-Senff Choir; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Claudio Abbado
DG 429 765-2GH (68' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
This disc is gloriously programmed for straight-through listening. It gets off to a cracking start with an urgently impassioned Tragic Overture in which the credentials of the Berlin Philharmonic to make a richly idiomatic, Brahmsian sound are substantially reaffirmed. A wide-eyed, breathtaking account of the Schicksalslied (‘Song of Destiny’) follows to provide sound contrast before the wonders of the Third Symphony are freshly explored. This is a reading of the Symphony to be savoured; it’s underpinned throughout by a rhythmic vitality which binds the four movements together with a forward thrust, making the end inevitable right from the opening bars. Even in the moments of repose and, especially, the warmly felt Andante, Abbado never lets the music forget its ultimate goal. Despite this, there are many moments of wonderful solo and orchestral playing along the way in which there’s time to delight, and Abbado seems to bring out that affable, Bohemian-woods, Dvorák-like element in Brahms’s music to a peculiar degree in this performance. The Symphony is recorded with a particular richness and some may find the heady waltz of the third movement done too lushly, emphasised by Abbado’s lingering tempo. Nevertheless, this is splendid stuff, and not to be missed.
Additional Recommendations
Symphony No 3
Coupled with Variations on a Theme by Haydn
London Philharmonic Orchestra / Marin Alsop
Naxos 8 557430 (56’ · DDD). Buy from Amazon
Brand-new budget-price recordings which can rub shoulders with the best are rarer than one imagines but this fine new Brahms disc probably comes into that category. Finding a recommendable Brahms Third is more difficult than one might suppose. Since Felix Weingartner made his very fine LPO recording in 1938, the number of great, or even successful, Thirds can probably be listed on the fingers of two hands.
Marin Alsop’s reading is certainly fine: dark of hue, lyrical and long drawn, though never, even for a moment, comatose. Rhythm is good, articulation keen, phrasing exquisite, the reading’s crepuscular colours glowingly realised by the LPO. The reading has a quality of melancholy, a wistfulness crossed with a sense of incipient tragedy, which is almost Elgarian (Elgar’s fascination with the piece is well attested).
Readings such as Furtwängler’s and Sanderling’s, which are more inclined to tower and course, may not have allowed themselves to be overtopped by the Haydn Variations, yet there is something rather wonderful about the transition we have here from dark to light. It is a long time since we had a performance of the Variations as well grounded and as keenly profiled as this. Winds are splendidly to the fore: skirling flutes, songful oboes, grumbling descants on the horns ‘in deep B’. It is, above all, a reading of great character: the horn-led sixth variation a burgherly jaunt, the seventh variation a handsome galliard, the finale a Meistersinger-like revel.
Symphony No 3
Coupled with Einförmig ist der Liebe Gram, Op 113 No 13*. Es tönt ein voller Harfenklang, Op 17 No 1*. Gesang der Parzen, Op 89*. Ich schwing mein Horn ins Jammertal, Op 41 No 1*. Nachtwache I, Op 104 No 1*. Nänie, Op 82*
*Monteverdi Choir; Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique / Sir John Eliot Gardiner
Soli Deo Gloria SDG704 (70’ · DDD · T/t). Recorded live 2007-08. Buy from Amazon
The six choral items on this disc take us to the very heart of the enigma that is Brahms. It was not for nothing that Malcolm MacDonald began his superb and now shamefully out-of-print Master Musicians Brahms with a two-page preface on the Op 113 canon for female voices, Einförmig ist der Liebe Gram. Ingeniously laid out as a four-part canon in the sopranos accompanied by a two-part canon in the altos, it uses as its theme the emotionally drained melody of the hurdy-gurdy man’s song at the end of Schubert’s Winterreise.
Gardiner takes the canon fairly swiftly – a high-wire act of a cappella singing that intensifies the mood while focusing the craft. Taking up more than half the disc, the choral items are its obvious glory, though as on previous discs Gardiner sets his face against anything that could be construed as false consolation. In his element in Song of the Fates, he gives the sublime Nänie an unusually taut, sharp-edged feel.
Song of the Fates prefaces the Third Symphony, Nänie acts as its epilogue. It is superb planning. The symphony, however, receives a performance that will divide opinion – so extreme yet so finely realised is Gardiner’s interpretative take on the work. The outer movements are taken more rapidly than on any of the 70 or more versions on record. A brisk tempo and forward winds can work wonders in this work, as Klemperer proved to glorious effect. With an expert period ensemble at his command, Gardiner takes this approach to an extreme. Memorably as the inner movements are shaped, the finale is overdriven. But then Nänie breaks in with its redeeming touch.
