Brahms Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Johannes Brahms
Label: EMI
Magazine Review Date: 8/1996
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 73
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 556118-2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Symphony No. 3 |
Johannes Brahms, Composer
Johannes Brahms, Composer London Classical Players Roger Norrington, Conductor |
| Symphony No. 4 |
Johannes Brahms, Composer
Johannes Brahms, Composer London Classical Players Roger Norrington, Conductor |
Author: Stephen Johnson
I wonder how many other Gramophone readers have looked at the opening page of Brahms’s Third Symphony and experienced a flicker of doubt: is this another case of tradition leading us astray? Could Allegro con brio really mean just that: “quick, fiery”? A flicker of doubt to an ordinary music-lover is a green light to Roger Norrington; this new disc shows us his response: the Norringtonian Allegro con brio is a quick-waltz tempo, more like a two-in-a-bar than six-in-a-bar, the violins’ line stringing passionately forward – in fact more than a passing resemblance to the opening of Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony.
It’s a trail-blazing performance, rather than an interpretation that’s had time to mature, and not everything is fully convincing: the transition to the first movement’s more relaxed second group could certainly have been more flexible. But on the whole Norrington is far from rigidly metronomic; the contrast between dramatic, urgent allegro and the more reflective un poco sostenuto passage at the heart of the movement is particularly telling. And as the symphony progresses the insights seem to come more and more frequently. The Andante second movement is refreshingly expressive – some very telling phrasing from woodwind, and a wonderful opening out from the full orchestra in the big crescendo towards the end. There are similar fine things in the third movement; not least the horn solo in the recapitulation: Norrington uses nineteenth-century valve horns (so no ‘muted’ stopped notes), but the tone is appreciably different from what we expect today – warmer, less penetrating, and with an indefinable woodland character as the horn sounds through softly rustling leaves. It is this sylvan stillness (not quite serenity) that returns in the symphony’s closing pages, after Norrington’s unusually urgent, driving Allegro (echoes of the finale of Schubert’s Great C major Symphony in the recurrent triplet figures).
If there is one gain above all in these recordings, it is the texturing of the orchestral sound. Yes, there are momentary blemishes – trombone intonation in the coda of the Andante of No. 3, occasionally whiney high cello sound – but there’s far less of this sort of thing than some detractors would have you believe. As Norrington says, there are revelations: for example the woodwind are much more to the fore – not only because there are fewer strings, but also because the colours of the individual woodwind instruments are more sharply distinguished (it makes quite a difference to some of Brahms’s wind chords). In the Third Symphony’s coda the whole soundscape is transformed: strings, woodwind, horns are no longer sumptuously blended, but emerge as though on different planes – a three-dimensional forest, with shafts of sunlight, distant vistas glimpsed through screens of foliage. Granted, the recording helps (despite the studio-ish ambience), but it is the instruments and the musical direction that make the difference.
If I’m ultimately less sure about the Fourth Symphony, I’m still glad I heard it. This opening out of the orchestral sound reminded me – startlingly in places – of the marvellously alive 1935 Toscanini/BBC Symphony Orchestra recording (EMI, 10/89 – nla). Norrington’s version is nowhere near as compelling (the relaxed pace at the opening was surprising, and slightly disappointing), but it is full of fine things: the pungent sound of the woodwind choir announcing the slow movement, the warm, confidential tone of the wooden flute at the heart of the finale, and those rasping, but never over-powering trombones.
So, not perfection – but surely that was never Norrington’s aim. As in all his best performances and recordings he has thrown down a gauntlet. Are we going to go on deferring to tradition – and at the same time grumbling about how uninspiring most modern Brahms orchestral performances are? Or are we going to face up to the possibility that a composer’s scores and recorded remarks, and the testimonies of his contemporaries, could be an even more valuable source of insight into the music than even the greatest recordings of the past? Listen to these recordings without prejudice and your idea of The Brahms Sound will never be quite the same again.'
It’s a trail-blazing performance, rather than an interpretation that’s had time to mature, and not everything is fully convincing: the transition to the first movement’s more relaxed second group could certainly have been more flexible. But on the whole Norrington is far from rigidly metronomic; the contrast between dramatic, urgent allegro and the more reflective un poco sostenuto passage at the heart of the movement is particularly telling. And as the symphony progresses the insights seem to come more and more frequently. The Andante second movement is refreshingly expressive – some very telling phrasing from woodwind, and a wonderful opening out from the full orchestra in the big crescendo towards the end. There are similar fine things in the third movement; not least the horn solo in the recapitulation: Norrington uses nineteenth-century valve horns (so no ‘muted’ stopped notes), but the tone is appreciably different from what we expect today – warmer, less penetrating, and with an indefinable woodland character as the horn sounds through softly rustling leaves. It is this sylvan stillness (not quite serenity) that returns in the symphony’s closing pages, after Norrington’s unusually urgent, driving Allegro (echoes of the finale of Schubert’s Great C major Symphony in the recurrent triplet figures).
If there is one gain above all in these recordings, it is the texturing of the orchestral sound. Yes, there are momentary blemishes – trombone intonation in the coda of the Andante of No. 3, occasionally whiney high cello sound – but there’s far less of this sort of thing than some detractors would have you believe. As Norrington says, there are revelations: for example the woodwind are much more to the fore – not only because there are fewer strings, but also because the colours of the individual woodwind instruments are more sharply distinguished (it makes quite a difference to some of Brahms’s wind chords). In the Third Symphony’s coda the whole soundscape is transformed: strings, woodwind, horns are no longer sumptuously blended, but emerge as though on different planes – a three-dimensional forest, with shafts of sunlight, distant vistas glimpsed through screens of foliage. Granted, the recording helps (despite the studio-ish ambience), but it is the instruments and the musical direction that make the difference.
If I’m ultimately less sure about the Fourth Symphony, I’m still glad I heard it. This opening out of the orchestral sound reminded me – startlingly in places – of the marvellously alive 1935 Toscanini/BBC Symphony Orchestra recording (EMI, 10/89 – nla). Norrington’s version is nowhere near as compelling (the relaxed pace at the opening was surprising, and slightly disappointing), but it is full of fine things: the pungent sound of the woodwind choir announcing the slow movement, the warm, confidential tone of the wooden flute at the heart of the finale, and those rasping, but never over-powering trombones.
So, not perfection – but surely that was never Norrington’s aim. As in all his best performances and recordings he has thrown down a gauntlet. Are we going to go on deferring to tradition – and at the same time grumbling about how uninspiring most modern Brahms orchestral performances are? Or are we going to face up to the possibility that a composer’s scores and recorded remarks, and the testimonies of his contemporaries, could be an even more valuable source of insight into the music than even the greatest recordings of the past? Listen to these recordings without prejudice and your idea of The Brahms Sound will never be quite the same again.'
Brahms Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4
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