A Survey of Nielsen Symphony Cycles

► An Index of ionarts Discographies

Continuing my discographies, this is a survey of — hopefully — every extant recorded cycle of the Carl Nielsen symphonies. They are listed in chronological order of completion. This should include all cycles, whether they were issued as such or not, including those where multiple conductors were at work on it. I have heard many of these and possibly at least some symphonies of most of them, but hardly all of them. Comments on what you like or dislike about any given cycle are very much appreciated — be it below (where they might take a while to be noticed) on Twitter, or best: in both places.

On a personal note: It has taken me long – far too long – to really get into Carl Nielsen’s music. Especially his symphonies. I have attributed this to taking the wrong approach, namely to think of Nielsen as a southern cousin of Sibelius (see also: A Survey of Sibelius Symphony Cycles), expecting his symphonies to do some of the same sort of magic, spell a similar, vaguely “nordic” web of enchantment. On this count, Nielsen fails. He is not “Sibelius 2.0”, in fact, he really isn’t anything like Sibelius. No more, anyway, that Richard Strauss is anything like Sibelius, despite also being a sumptuous romantic composer of the 20th century. Tempting so it may be to hope for it, there are no swans in Nielsen, figure-skating across frozen lakes on a winter’s daybreak. The most prosaic picture you’ll be lucky to wrestle from Nielsen might be – and I’m winging it here – a frog hopping away in the woods. Nielsen himself – allegedly – told Sibelius once: “I don’t reach as high as your ankles.” (If you can find a source for that quote, do let me know!)

The composer who paved my way towards greater, more intense Nielsen-appreciation happened to have been Bohuslav Martinů (see also: A Survey of Martinů Symphony Cycles). It turns out that his six symphonies have much more of a kinship with Nielsen’s than do Sibelius’… if for no more profound reason than both of them working off rhythm and propulsion as their main ingredients. Once I came to Nielsen thinking “Martinů”, not “Sibelius”, I found them far more intriguing and the listening-experience was no longer tainted by disappointment but by a newfound state of wonder at the many things Nielsen does offer. It speaks to the enduring qualities of the composer that he is so well served on record – quantitatively, at least. This survey currently lists 28 symphony cycles by the most liberal count and still 17 if you are stingy (counting only single conductor/composer cycles that are available boxed). Compare that to just seven for Martinů, 14 for Vaughan Willians (see also: “A Survey of Vaughan-William Symphony Cycles”), or 20 for Dvořák (see also: A Survey of Dvořák Symphony Cycles), even it can’t compare to the 50+ that Sibelius has to his name).

Qualitatively is another matter; Nielsen is hard to pull off, even to those ears that take more readily to him than mine did. For his symphonies to really grab you by the lapel and draw you in, a lot of ingredients need to be right. It’s hard to draw general conclusions about what works and what doesn’t, but I think it is fair to say that finesse and delicacy are not two ingredients on which the success of good Nielsen depends. Better a bit more brash than reticent in this music, bold rather than refined. As such, I like the gruff Ole Schmidt, the vividly-vital Bryden Thomson, the sumptuously grand Alan Gilbert, and the carefree abandon of Adrian Leaper. As you might imagine, Leonard Bernstein has a lot to bring to Nielsen – and indeed his Fifth (especially) is one of the great Nielsen-recordings there is. With the same sweeping gesture, I condemn high-profile cycles to the dustbin of civilized boredom. Among them Blomstedt (at least the EMI recordings), Davis, Saraste, Schønwandt (the cycle I started out with – and I might be wrong about it; others love it), and even Vänskä. [Actually, not so fast: Vänskä proved to have distinct merits, on third hearing.] If you are already into Nielsen, I am sure you have your favorites and “Mehs” already, yourself. Curiously, it seems like it is always the same labels that tend towards Nielsen: Chandos, BIS, and (understandably) the Danish Dacapo-label each have three cycles on offer and Chandos already has a fourth (Gardner) in the making. (The fact that DG now has two cycles is probably owed more to the Luisi-cycle having been offered for free to them, than DG having had any designs on adding to Paavo Järvi's cycle from the early 90s.)

I am sitting on the data for several new discographic entries under work. Ring cycles, Mahler, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven symphony cycles, Mozart Piano Concerto and String Quartet-cycles, among others. They take an awful lot of time to research, however, and even more time to put into html-presentable shape. And even then they are rarely complete or mistake-free. Neither will this one be, and every such post is also a plea to generously inclined readers with more information and knowledge of the subject than I have to lend a helping hand correcting my mistakes or filling data-lacunae.

I am explicitly grateful for any such pointers, hinters, and corrections and apologize for any bloomers. (Preferably on Twitter, where I'll read the comment much sooner than here, but either works!) Unlike some earlier discographies, this one does intend to be comprehensive. So I am especially grateful when I have sets that I have missed (such that only ever appeared on LP, for example) pointed out to me. I have not listened to them all, but favorites are indicated with the "ionarts choice" graphic. Ditto recommended cycles by ClassicsToday/David Hurwitz. Links to reputable reviews are included where I thought of it and could find any. With hundreds of links in this document, there are, despite my best efforts, bound to be some that are broken or misplaced; I am glad about every correction that comes my way re. those, too.

Enjoy and leave a comment in some form!


(Survey begins after the break, if you didn't land on this page directly)

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Critic’s Notebook: Eric(h) Zeisl’s Requiem Ebraico – An Exile’s Synthesis

Also published in two parts in Die Presse: Concert review: Begeistert und begeisternd: Zeisls „Requiem Ebraico“ im Musikverein & Zeisl-primer with exhibition notice: Ausstellung zu Erich Zeisl: Ein vertriebener, verlorener Sohn der Musikstadt Wien

A.Zemlinsky, Psalm XIII R.Chailly / RSO Berlin Decca

Eric(h) Zeisl et al., Requiem Ebraico ++ "Remembrance" J.Neschling / OSESP BIS

Gustav Mahler, Symphony No.1 P.Boulez / Chicago SO DG

Eric(h) Zeisl dropped the “h” fleeing the Nazis at Ellis Island — but at heart, he always remained a Viennese composer.

What would 20^th-century classical music have sounded like if it hadn’t been interrupted by the all-consuming catastrophe of the Second World War? We’ll never know. But there are traces. Among the lost currents of “disappeared” music is a post-Stravinskian branch: spiky but tonal. You catch glimpses of it in the works of Wolfgang Fortner, Boris Blacher, Viktor Ullmann, Werner Egk, Karl Amadeus Hartmann or Harald Genzmer. Alongside that stood a more romantic strain – one more in the tradition of Richard Strauss. That’s where you’d place Erich Korngold, Franz Schmidt, Joseph Marx – and Surprised-by-Beauty-composer Eric(h) Zeisl.

Some of these composers escaped physical destruction. But their works didn’t survive the postwar shift in listening aesthetics. State and institutional support overwhelmingly favored one very specific kind of modernism, cementing the divide between “safe” repertoire and contemporary music. Tonal composers were looked down upon – vaguely associated with Nazi-aesthetic tastes, even those the Nazis had labeled “degenerate” and persecuted. These composers were caught between two worlds. Zeisl especially.

Erich Zeisl was born in Vienna in 1905 to the owners of Café Tegetthoff, with Jewish-Hungarian roots. He began composing at 14, entered the Conservatory at 16, and won the Lili Boulanger Prize at 20. His early songs were picked up by the great bass Alexander Kipnis, among others. His opera Hiob – based on the novel by Joseph Roth – was submitted to the Austrian Music Council. The verdict was unanimous: not modern enough.

When the Nazis marched into Austria in 1938, Zeisl fled to Paris, then to the United States. In Hollywood, his career didn’t take off or crash – it just moved sideways. He worked as an arranger and composer for MGM and Warner Bros., writing uncredited music for films like Lassie Come Home, Money, Women, and Guns, and others. No breakthrough, no fame – California led Zeisl not to career heights, but to a musicological footnote.

ExilArte, the Center for Persecuted Music in Vienna, just between the Konzerthaus and the Akademietheater – is trying to nudge him back toward the repertoire. Help came from attorney Randol Schoenberg, grandson of Arnold Schoenberg – and of Zeisl. Schoenberg brought Zeisl’s papers and music back to Vienna, where they are now housed at ExilArte. The aim: to let young, unencumbered students at the MDW discover the extraordinarily fine music of Eric(h) Zeisl – who may have dropped the “h” in America, but who remained, in his musical heart, always a Viennese.

One chance to discover Zeisl’s music came on the following Sunday, when the RSO Vienna performed one of his best-known works, the Requiem Ebraico, at the Musikverein.

One of the RSO Vienna’s core responsibilities is to enrich Vienna’s concert scene with interesting programs – programs the other orchestras often lack the courage or will to offer. This includes music that, once introduced, audiences actively want to hear and possibly hear again.

Sunday evening’s concert was a textbook example. Granted, Gustav Mahler’s First isn’t exactly a revelation – but hey, even the Golden Hall doesn’t fill itself. Mahler draws a crowd, Alsop loves to conduct him, and programmatically it all dovetailed with Alexander Zemlinsky and Eric(h) Zeisl. And you can’t really go wrong: Just play loud enough and fast enough and the audience will be awed into laudatory submission by the sheer force of sound. The shrill strings? Forgotten. . The out-of-sync basses? Forgiven... The absence of any dynamic below mezzoforte? Well, that was a pity. But even within this gleeful sonic bludgeoning, there were fine moments: the rustic launch of the second movement, the tipsy staggering towards the fourth movement. The audience pre-emptively gave Marin Alsop a standing ovation – a warm-up for her farewell appearance this Thursday, when she’ll conduct her final program as RSO Chief Conductor (Mahler 2).

Zemlinsky’s grand, even glorious setting of Psalm 13 for chorus, organ and large orchestra opened the evening with weight and passion. Doubt and resistance rendered into stirring – but never shallow – music. But the secret centerpiece was Zeisl’s Requiem Ebraico. Zeisl wrote more immediately appealing and coherent works, but none that so deftly fused the different strata that exile imposes – Vienna and California, modernism and romanticism, secularism and Judaism – into one frame, without stooping to the lowest common denominator. The sharply articulated solos and the Singverein – unintelligible, but enthusiastic – gave the piece the intensity it needs.

Stripped of his cultural German identity and his Austrian homeland, Zeisl’s Requiem is an attempt to situate his European, Jewish, and American self in music. The synthesis was, in 1944, ahead of its time: too European for Americans, too American for Europeans, too Jewish for Christians, too Christian for Jews, too modern for conservatives, too conservative for modernists – and yet always beloved by audiences. The Musikverein was no exception. A moving, compelling, and captivating glimpse into a world that never got to exist.

From May 14, the ExilArte Center presents the exhibition Erich Zeisl – Vienna’s Lost Son in Exile.

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Critic’s Notebook: Debbie Does Vienna - A Belated Handel-Premiere* in Vienna

Also reviewed for Die Presse: „Deborah“ im Konzerthaus: Händels Chöre reißen mit

G.F.Handel, Deborah Y.Kenny, S.Gritton, J.Bowman etc. The King's Consort / R.King Hyperion

Handel’s Deborah gets its long-overdue Vienna premiere at the Konzerthaus

There are still first times — even for a composer as well-known and well-loved as Georg Friedrich Handel. His oratorio Deborah finally had its modern* Vienna premiere on Sunday night at the Konzerthaus — just shy of 300 years after its debut in London. (*A little further research showed that t had actually been performed at the Musikverein in 1916!)

A rarely performed and seldom recorded work, Deborah has had a knotty reception history from the start: Handel’s second English-language oratorio was a flop at its premiere, and the libretto — not without some justification — was mocked as sub-par. Later, the piece was dismissed as a pasticcio, given that Handel, unusually even for him, recycled a remarkable number of earlier pieces: only about 32 percent of the score is newly composed. As a result, Deborah has always sat awkwardly between Esther (his oratorio breakthrough) and his early oratorio blockbuster Saul.

And yet it has its undeniable charms: a grand-scale cast and loads of glorious choruses. These delights were put to vivid use in the Grosser Saal by the Amsterdam Baroque Choir & Orchestra under their director, Ton Koopman.

In the title role, soprano Sophie Junker impressed with a bright, velvety, powerful — if surprisingly vibrato-heavy — voice, which came into especially moving focus in the aria “In Jehovah’s awful sight.” Opposite her, Jakub Józef Orliński, a rising star among countertenors, sang the role of Barak. He started off solidly and only got better from there: his focused, clear, and piercing tone — mesmerizing especially at full volume (and it gets very loud) — had undeniable charm. Think Andreas Schager, but for the Baroque and with better intonation.

That said, not everything sparkled. Koopman’s own organ playing was occasionally smudgy, the violins had their patchy moments, and the chorister doubling as the high priest of Baal was, frankly, out of his depth. Still, another chorister, Kieran White, made a convincingly vivid herald, and Amelia Berridge was delightful as Jaël, especially when merrily recounting how she nailed Sisera’s head to the ground with a wooden tent stake.

Granted, the ABO doesn’t currently play at the level of the Ensemble Pygmalion — but when the 26-head strong choir let rip with “O Baal, monarch of the skies!” you could see feet tapping along in the audience rows. Rightly so. Especially given that they performed a whole lot better than any such local ensemble could reasonably have been expected to do, the singular boo that rained down was rather inexplicable.


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Critic’s Notebook: Vienna Symphony Back in Form under Petr Popelka

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Konzerthaus: Die Symphoniker wissen, wie Schlagobers klingen muss

L.v.Beethoven, Overtures C.Abbado / WPhil DG

Korngold *(+ Barber), Violin Concertos G.Shaham, A.Previn, LSO DG

Richard Strauss, Rosenkavalier Suite et al. A.Previn / WPhil DG

The Vienna Symphony, under their chief conductor, back in buoyant form

Beethoven’s overture for the Consecration of the House is one of those pieces you rarely catch live — and all the more welcome for it. After all, it's late Beethoven, yet breezy, pretty chipper, gratifyingly succinct, and most importantly, on Saturday evening, it was played with exactly the kind of vitality it needs by the Vienna Symphony under their boss, Petr Popelka. That seemed necessary, after last week's deadly boring outing.

That elegant opener was followed by Korngold’s Violin Concerto. Long sniffed at, the piece has — justly — found its place in the core repertoire. Its combination of lush rhapsodic and lively bite puts it just behind the genre’s most beloved entries. Still, it requires both soloist and orchestra to tread a fine line: too much in either direction, and it risks sounding sappy or aimless.

Renaud Capuçon, ever the solid violinist, seemed a bit unsure on the interpretive front — especially in the first two movements, which gave him more trouble than expected. The orchestra, however, played with clarity and nuance, bringing its signature composure to the table. But of course Capuçon has the sufficient je ne sais quoi, the commanding presence and enough routine, and that air of being above small matters in general, that he can still score with the audience. An improved third movement didn't hurt, either and his encore—Massenet’s Méditation, with harpist Volker Kempf hit the populist bullseye.

The connections between Josef Strauss’ Dynamiden Waltz and the 'Rosenkavalier-Waltz from Richard Strauss’ opera (played as part of the Suite) may be obvious on paper or to Popelka (who cleverly programmed these pieces on the second half), but by the time the latter appears, you’ve long since forgotten the former. That's not the least because Popelka led the 'Richard' with an exuberance that would have befit Salome, gripping, and flexible like a juvenile rubber band. See? It can be done.


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Critic’s Notebook: Drop-dead gorgeous: Pygmalion plays Shakespeare — en français

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Zum Sterben schön: Ein Requiem für Ophelia mit Pygmalion im Konzerthaus

G.Fauré, Requiem (v.1900) K.Battle, A.Schmidt C.M.Giulini / Philharmonia DG

G.Fauré, Requiem (v.1893) A.Mellon, P.Kooy P.Herreweghe / La Chapelle Royale Harmonia Mundi

A.Thomas, Hamlet T.Hampson, J.Anderson, S.Ramey, D.Graves A.De Almeida / LPO EMI/Warner

The French ensemble’s musical Hamlet-synthesis culminated in a heavenly Fauré Requiem

Music-as-theatre — that’s a concept Raphaël Pichon and his Ensemble Pygmalion have been embracing for a while now. By threading a dramatic arc through a series of thematically and musically connected works, they often bring lesser-known pieces out into the light. They’ve done it with Bach (Köthener Trauermusik), resurrected early Mozart (“Liberta!”, both Harmonia Mundi), and in Salzburg this summer they will give Mozart’s unfinished stage works an outing, propped up and united by some dramatic scaffolding (Zaide, or the Way towards the Light).

Saturday night at the Konzerthaus, it was Ambroise Thomas’s grand opéra Hamlet and Fauré’s Requiem, joined by rarely performed Berlioz (Tristia, Parts 1 and 3, but not “La mort d’Ophélie”) that formed a full-length program under the title/theme: Requiem pour Ophélie.

Since Thomas’s Hamlet is a rare guest at the opera house (last seen in Vienna in 2012, also with Stéphane Degout) and comes with its longueurs, hearing its best scenes in this concentrated form was a treat. Sabine Devieilhe—with her agile voice, secure high notes, and dramatic punch—lent the music a quality bordering on outrageous and made an Ophelia to die for. Degout: powerful, open, warm, sonorous, and without a trace of nasality. What more could one want?!

Still more, as it turned out! Fauré’s Requiem — unquestionably one of the most beautiful of its kind — offered everything the heart could desire. The orchestra, with its colourful, rich yet pliant sound, a sublimely musical harp, and a harmonium that chimed in (in the best sense) like a cross between synth and accordion, was sheer joy. The superbly blended, earthy-sounding chorus was its equal in tonal and executive quality. And by the time Devieilhe reached her “Pie Jesu” and “In Paradisum,” all that was left was childlike wonder and quiet bliss. It’s hard to hold back the tears, when faced with such beauty.


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Critic’s Notebook: A Damp Squib with the Vienna Symphony

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Musikverein: Eine verpasste Chance mit den Wiener Symphonikern

D.Shostakovich, Violin Concerto Alina Ibragimova V.Jurowski / Russian State Academic SO hyperion

C.Debussy, La Mer (et al.) D.Gatti / ONdeFrance Sony

M.Ravel, La valse (et al.) S.Celibidache / MPhil MPhil Archive

Isabelle Faust’s Shostakovich could have been a major moment — but never got the support it needed

After a special evening at the with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (see review), it was back to meat-and-potatoes on Thursday. The ingredients sounded promising enough, for a concert with the Vienna Symphony in which Isabelle Faust would perform Shostakovich’s Second Violin Concerto. And she certainly wasn’t the problem: her contribution had the ears prick up, whether it was the plaintive, lamenting tone she drew from her instrument by way of strategically wide vibrato — penetrating and tender all at once — or her mercilessly instant, stone-faced gear-shift into an aggressively hard-edged sound. Even at moderate tempos, Faust managed to carry a good deal of precarious tension across from the Adagio of the second movement into the Adagio of the third. That wasn’t enough to save Shostakovich’s astringent late work, however.

And it’s not even that the VSO played badly. In fact, they played solidly enough, no major blunders, and conductor Alain Altinoglu at least seemed engaged and trying hard. But whether in the prelude to Khovanshchina (where the thin violin sound didn’t help), or in Debussy’s La Mer, the results were uniformly dull, the results were eye-wateringly boring: the sound was murky, the energy sluggish, the atmosphere in the hall unsettled. The orchestra sounded like it was on autopilot — as if this were just another rehearsal-free repertoire run-through over at the State Opera. Tremolos remained tremolos and never lifted off the strings, becoming a shimmering iridescence. Dynamic shadings felt merely mechanical. Any Fortissimo wasn’t majestic — just loud. Where mystery was called for, we got mezzo piano.

At least Ravel’s La Valse is more or less impossible to ruin. Here it stumbled along with the grace of a drunken elephant — which, after all, rather suits it. But the veil that had lowered between orchestra and audience — and somehow also between orchestra and conductor — never lifted again.


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Dip Your Ears: No. 281 (Top of the Shostakovich-15 Heap, Still!)

D.Shostakovich Symphony No.15 [42:38] Boris Tchaikovsky Theme & 8 Var. [18:12] Dresden StaKap, K.Kondrashin (Hänssler Profil, 2007)

Kondrashin in Dresden

“Profil – Edition Günter Hänssler” has been issuing more and more CDs from (old) German radio tapes that vie for a spot in the limelight of the mainstream. Especially some of the more recent performances of the Staatskapelle Dresden like Bernhard Haitink’s supreme Bruckner 6^th and a Mahler 9^th with Giuseppe Sinopoli are immensely impressive. This recording of Shostakovich’s 15^th Symphony with Kyrill Kondrashin, too, makes this list.

On January 23^rd, 1974 – just a little over a year before Shostakovich died – Kondrashin conducted his favorite German orchestra in a concert celebrating the 425^th anniversary of the orchestra, the 50^th anniversary of the renaming of St. Petersburg as Leningrad, and the 30^th anniversary of the break of the German siege of Leningrad.

The latest and last symphony of the great composer from St. Petersburg was a logical choice for this, but it wouldn’t have escaped Kondrashin, or the Dresden audience, that it is uniquely unsuited to venerate the Soviet—or any communist—regime. After vocal symphonies 13 and 14, Shostakovich, fatally ill and well aware of it, returned to an almost classical form of the symphony.

In the essay that accompanied the recording of Maxim Shostakovich (said to be the best performance of Shostakovich’s son on record – but to my knowledge not available on CD) Shostakovich spoke of the first movement Adagietto as a “toy-shop with plenty of knick-knacks and trinkets – absolutely cheerful”. No listener will get away from the first movement without doubting the composer’s own words. If it is a toy-shop at all, it’s one that sells little tanks, toy-guns, and junior’s first water boarding-kit. It’s a romp with its share of plink and delicate chirping, but this collection of trivialities amid intensity, with crashing marching bands and ballerinas, sounds like a sugarplum fairy-cum-guerilla fighter. There are moments that remind of the 2nd and 9th Symphony, and it’s always interrupted by the seemingly random William Tell overture excerpt that all American audiences can identify as the “Lone Ranger” theme.

It’s not impossible that Shostakovich knew the Lone Ranger and his heroic deeds (or his appeal to children, which would go with the toy-shop story) – but it’s more likely the Rossini original that inspired him. And that’s telling enough: A story about a man who is coerced to use his skill (archery, in Tell’s case) according to the bidding of a despot – who then uses that skill to fight against tyranny. If anything it seems that Shostakovich, in the hospital while composing this movement, had dispensed with being subtle in his political statements.

On ionarts: Shostakovich Symphony Cycle Survey

The strange giddiness of the first movement is immediately subdued by the grave brass chorale that opens the dark second movement. Phases of rest-and-answer and the cello’s lamenting song lead into trombone and violin statements that are everything but “absolutely cheerful”. Trombone glissandi (the ones that enraged Stalin in Lady Macbeth) are employed and eventually the subdued movement wakens and rises slowly to a big orchestral thrashing-about. It’s much like the Shostakovich from Symphonies 4, 7, 8, and 11 – but with an incredible efficiency of means, almost chamber-like in proportion and scoring.

The little, friendly third movement (Allegretto) has moments that are nearly Haydnesque before the fourth movement takes over with another blatant musical quotation – this time Wagner’s ‘ensuing death’ (or “fate”) motif from the Ring, already foreshadowed in the Adagio of the second movement. The yearning opening of Tristan & Isolde also appears several times, completing the atmosphere of resignation and departure. More difficult to hear, if you don’t know about them, are references or quotations of a Glinka song, twelve-tone rows (“bourgeois decadence!”), Strauss’ Heldenleben (the “adversaries” phrase, third movement), and many others that I will have missed completely. In this fourth, as in the second movement and in so many of his other symphonies, there is the gathering of momentum, the orchestral outbreak, the swoop up… here leading to a Passacaglia – and then the symphony dithers away in a morose mood over ghastly tic-tocs of a clock and a last, faint glimmer of percussive hope.

Especially the Wagner quotations, himself once Hofkapellmeister in Dresden, would not have escaped the sophisticated Dresden audience at this performance, the last together with Kondrashin. And what an extraordinary performance it is. It is better in every regards than Kondrashin’s earlier recording (Melodiya / Aulos): The playing is finer, indeed flawless. The sound, with a little artificial reverb, is excellent from the GDR’s radio-broadcast recording crew. Lasting about 42 minutes, the tempi are marginally more relaxed than in the Moscow recording, but still very much on the fast side which means that no moments are allowed to sag or lumber along. I have not heard the mythical first Maxim Shostakovich performance (and I'm not sure how many of those who sing its praises have, either), but among the interpretations I know (Barshai, Caetani, Haitink, Järvi/DG, Kitajenko, Kondrashin/Moscow (oop), Ormandy, and especially the favorite Sanderling/Cleveland), this one goes to the very top.

The Theme & Eight Variations by Boris Tchaikovsky (not related) was written for this concert and are heard in their world premiere. The work has only reinforced my curiosity about—and appreciation of—a composer that really belongs in a next edition of Surprised by Beauty.

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This review had been previously published on the long-nixed WETA 90.9 blog.

Critic’s Notebook: Bremen Chamber Philharmonic & Janine Jansen Wow in Vienna

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Bremer Stadtmusikanten erobern Wien

F.Schubert, Symphonies 8 & 9 T.Dausgaard / Swedish CO BIS

L.v.Beethoven (+ Britten), Violin Concerto J.Jansen, Paavo Järvi / DKPBremen Decca

F.Schubert, Symphonies 3, 4, 5 T.Dausgaard / Swedish CO BIS

Town Musicians of Bremen Delight the Musikverein-Crowd

Precise, colorful, committed, to the point, and darned dramatic — that’s how the Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi whipped up Schubert’s Eighth — the “Unfinished” — Symphony at the Musikverein. All hallmarks of this orchestra–conductor partnership, which, even in its 21st year, shows little sign of wear. The pinpoint cues, the evenly shaped crescendos, the clean, secure tone of the strings — especially in quiet passages — practically leapt out at the ear and set this apart from your average ‘pretty good’ concert fare. (It is gratifying, really, how easy the excellent concerts, when they occurr, distinguish themselves from the middle-of-the-road fare!)

The same picture in Schubert’s Fourth Symphony, played in the second half. The only thing that's “Tragic” about this work is really only how boring it tends to sound in the hands of so many, even the most famous, conductors. Not here! With the Paavo–Bremen combo, there's a snap and bang, almost even before the first chord has landed — so lightning-fast comes the entry. And from that moment on, everything is wildly exaggerated: dynamics, phrasing, rhythm, absurdly fast tempi. Wherever something can be ratcheted up, it is. Anything that can be sharpened, is. You'd think the result would be an overwraught, artificial mess — like a hyperrealist painting by Denis Peterson. Nothing of the kind. It all stays tasteful, and the symphony comes alive for a change, becomes electrifying — just as the first big symphonic statement of an 18-year-old should, goshdarnit.

If the orchestra had just a wee bit less focus in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto to offer, Janine Jansen more than made up for it. In a thin black pleated dress with wide sleeves, resembling a musical bat mid-flight, she played with a astonishingly intense piano (verging on pianissimo). To produce that much sound with such ease and airiness must surely also have impressed Marin Alsop and Philippe Jordan, who popped in, because they weren’t about to miss this. Less fitting, after the super-vital Schubert, though heartbreakingly beautiful and so very, very gorgeous, was the Sibelian Andante Festivo as encore.


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