Vladimir Jurowski, Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin. Pentatone PTC 5186 802.
By John J. Puccio
When German composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949) premiered Eine Alpensinfonie (“An Alpine Symphony”) in 1915, anticipation ran high among classical-music enthusiasts. After all, it was Richard Strauss who had almost single-handedly resurrected and then developed the genre of the tone poem with such profound works as Also Sprach Zarathustra, Death and Transfiguration, Ein Heldenleben, Symfonia Domestica, Don Juan, and Don Quixote. All the same, what audiences wanted and what they got turned out to be two different things, with some critics describing An Alpine Symphony as picture-postcard fluff and others as “cinema music.”
This has not stopped the greatest conductors of the modern era from recording Eine Alpensinfonie, though, with people like Karl Bohm, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hans Knapperbusch, Evgeny Svetlanov, Yvgeny Mravinsky, Rudolf Kempe, Zubin Mehta, Georg Solti, Herbert von Karajan, Bernard Haitink, Herbert Blomstedt, Seiji Ozawa, Lorin Maazel, and a host of others giving it a shot. Still, the picture-postcard business remains stuck in people’s minds, so in the present recording Russian-British conductor Vladimir Jurowski aims to help people take it more seriously.
Why doesn’t everyone appreciate Strauss’s Alpine Symphony? Maybe because of the program notes the composer provided, which describe the score’s musical ascent of an alpine peak and down again, each segment a tiny musical picture of the journey. Here are Strauss’s program notes, from the opening pages to the closing: Night, Sunrise, The Ascent, Entry into the Forest, Wandering by the Brook, At the Waterfall, Apparition, On Flowering Meadows, On the Alpine Pasture, Through Thickets and Undergrowth on the Wrong Path, On the Glacier, Dangerous Moments, On the Summit, Vision, Mists Rise, The Sun Gradually Becomes Obscured, Elegy, Calm Before the Storm, Thunder and Tempest, Descent, Sunset, Quiet Settles, and Night.
Moreover, even though Strauss called it a “symphony,” it’s clearly not a symphony in the traditional sense. It’s more akin to the composer’s other big tone poems in being episodic and descriptive. I suppose Strauss’s aim was to follow the example of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony. Certainly, there was an effort to capture the beauty and importance of Nature in the music. Yet it wasn’t enough to satisfy every listener’s hunger for deep philosophical insights into the nature of Man.
For this new disc (the conductor’s second recording of The Alpine Symphony within a few years), Maestro Jurowski suggests that people got it all wrong. He tells us that, yes, the symphony does on the surface recall the climbing of a mountain but that it’s more than that. In a booklet note he explains that “...underneath that ‘structured but un-structural picture-postcard’ lie the deeper layers of a philosophical musical experiment.” He reminds us that “Strauss originally called the work ‘The Antichrist’ (after Nietzsche’s book of the same title), stating that it ‘represents moral purification through one’s own strength, liberation through work, (and) worship of eternal, magnificent nature.’”
Fair enough: Jurowski here attempts to return to Strauss’s original intentions, although I’m not entirely sure how he thought he was doing it. His is a big, bold, grand interpretation in the big, bold, grand tradition of Romantic music (Strauss’s score calls for something like 125 players), yet the result is not particularly revealing of any new or suppressed meaning. It’s impressive and highly suggestive of the segment titles without imparting much that we haven’t heard before. Which is not a bad thing, mind you; it’s a solid and satisfying rendition of the music. It’s just maybe that Jurowski’s reading doesn’t quite live up to the high expectations he sets up for himself.
Anyway, Jurowski starts us off on the right foot with a nicely hushed introduction leading to a well-judged ascent of the mountain. The “Entry into the Forest,” too, is well taken, providing a kind of fairy-tale quality to the music. Under Jurowski’s direction, the “Brook” and the “Waterfall” are appropriately picturesque and expressive, sections that probably gave rise to the “picture postcard” reproaches. Still, the conductor handles them with a serious composure, lending them added strength and credibility. By the time the protagonist crosses the glacier and reaches the mountain’s summit (and the score’s apex) in “Vision,” Jurowski is in complete command. The majesty of the music does, indeed, match the majesty of Nature.
It’s from this point on (down the mountain) that I found Jurowski losing intensity. It’s as though he had put everything into the climb up and wanted to slide back down as effortlessly as possible. Not even the storm comes off with as much tumult or turmoil as I’ve heard from other conductors. Frankly, it seemed a little hurried and the orchestra a little underpowered.
As Mark Twain wrote in “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras Country”: “I don't see no p’ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.” Jurowski’s rendering of Strauss’s music is good, at least in the first half, but doesn’t displace my favored recordings, especially not the two made by Rudolf Kempe (RCA/Testament and EMI/JVC). I suppose a lot of folks will be tempted to buy the Pentatone album because it is presented in the SACD format, and that’s fine, too. They won’t be disappointed. However, I advise considering the alternatives as well.
Producers Florian B. Schmidt, Stefan Lang, and Renaud Loranger and engineers Jorg Peter Urbach and Calvin B. Cooper recorded the music live at the Konzerthaus Berlin in February 2019. They made it for hybrid SACD playback, a two-channel stereo and multichannel SACD layer playable only on an SACD player and a regular two-channel stereo layer playable on any regular CD player. I listened in two-channel SACD.
Despite its being recorded live, with an audience present, the sound is pretty good. It’s miked at a moderate distance rather than being too close up, and the perspective is realistic. The sound is not entirely transparent at this range, particularly with an audience to consider, but it is fairly lifelike, with just enough hall ambience to help it come alive in a warmly natural manner. Dynamics are also good, although because of the difference in volume between the softest and loudest levels, it does need a little gain boost at first. Nevertheless, the sonics still seemed a bit tame compared to several other ordinary stereo versions I own. Maybe I expected a bit too much of SACD, or maybe it only comes to full fruition in multichannel playback.
JJP
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:
This has not stopped the greatest conductors of the modern era from recording Eine Alpensinfonie, though, with people like Karl Bohm, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hans Knapperbusch, Evgeny Svetlanov, Yvgeny Mravinsky, Rudolf Kempe, Zubin Mehta, Georg Solti, Herbert von Karajan, Bernard Haitink, Herbert Blomstedt, Seiji Ozawa, Lorin Maazel, and a host of others giving it a shot. Still, the picture-postcard business remains stuck in people’s minds, so in the present recording Russian-British conductor Vladimir Jurowski aims to help people take it more seriously.
Why doesn’t everyone appreciate Strauss’s Alpine Symphony? Maybe because of the program notes the composer provided, which describe the score’s musical ascent of an alpine peak and down again, each segment a tiny musical picture of the journey. Here are Strauss’s program notes, from the opening pages to the closing: Night, Sunrise, The Ascent, Entry into the Forest, Wandering by the Brook, At the Waterfall, Apparition, On Flowering Meadows, On the Alpine Pasture, Through Thickets and Undergrowth on the Wrong Path, On the Glacier, Dangerous Moments, On the Summit, Vision, Mists Rise, The Sun Gradually Becomes Obscured, Elegy, Calm Before the Storm, Thunder and Tempest, Descent, Sunset, Quiet Settles, and Night.
For this new disc (the conductor’s second recording of The Alpine Symphony within a few years), Maestro Jurowski suggests that people got it all wrong. He tells us that, yes, the symphony does on the surface recall the climbing of a mountain but that it’s more than that. In a booklet note he explains that “...underneath that ‘structured but un-structural picture-postcard’ lie the deeper layers of a philosophical musical experiment.” He reminds us that “Strauss originally called the work ‘The Antichrist’ (after Nietzsche’s book of the same title), stating that it ‘represents moral purification through one’s own strength, liberation through work, (and) worship of eternal, magnificent nature.’”
Fair enough: Jurowski here attempts to return to Strauss’s original intentions, although I’m not entirely sure how he thought he was doing it. His is a big, bold, grand interpretation in the big, bold, grand tradition of Romantic music (Strauss’s score calls for something like 125 players), yet the result is not particularly revealing of any new or suppressed meaning. It’s impressive and highly suggestive of the segment titles without imparting much that we haven’t heard before. Which is not a bad thing, mind you; it’s a solid and satisfying rendition of the music. It’s just maybe that Jurowski’s reading doesn’t quite live up to the high expectations he sets up for himself.
Anyway, Jurowski starts us off on the right foot with a nicely hushed introduction leading to a well-judged ascent of the mountain. The “Entry into the Forest,” too, is well taken, providing a kind of fairy-tale quality to the music. Under Jurowski’s direction, the “Brook” and the “Waterfall” are appropriately picturesque and expressive, sections that probably gave rise to the “picture postcard” reproaches. Still, the conductor handles them with a serious composure, lending them added strength and credibility. By the time the protagonist crosses the glacier and reaches the mountain’s summit (and the score’s apex) in “Vision,” Jurowski is in complete command. The majesty of the music does, indeed, match the majesty of Nature.
It’s from this point on (down the mountain) that I found Jurowski losing intensity. It’s as though he had put everything into the climb up and wanted to slide back down as effortlessly as possible. Not even the storm comes off with as much tumult or turmoil as I’ve heard from other conductors. Frankly, it seemed a little hurried and the orchestra a little underpowered.
As Mark Twain wrote in “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras Country”: “I don't see no p’ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.” Jurowski’s rendering of Strauss’s music is good, at least in the first half, but doesn’t displace my favored recordings, especially not the two made by Rudolf Kempe (RCA/Testament and EMI/JVC). I suppose a lot of folks will be tempted to buy the Pentatone album because it is presented in the SACD format, and that’s fine, too. They won’t be disappointed. However, I advise considering the alternatives as well.
Producers Florian B. Schmidt, Stefan Lang, and Renaud Loranger and engineers Jorg Peter Urbach and Calvin B. Cooper recorded the music live at the Konzerthaus Berlin in February 2019. They made it for hybrid SACD playback, a two-channel stereo and multichannel SACD layer playable only on an SACD player and a regular two-channel stereo layer playable on any regular CD player. I listened in two-channel SACD.
Despite its being recorded live, with an audience present, the sound is pretty good. It’s miked at a moderate distance rather than being too close up, and the perspective is realistic. The sound is not entirely transparent at this range, particularly with an audience to consider, but it is fairly lifelike, with just enough hall ambience to help it come alive in a warmly natural manner. Dynamics are also good, although because of the difference in volume between the softest and loudest levels, it does need a little gain boost at first. Nevertheless, the sonics still seemed a bit tame compared to several other ordinary stereo versions I own. Maybe I expected a bit too much of SACD, or maybe it only comes to full fruition in multichannel playback.
JJP
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:
