Brahms: Symphonies 3 & 4 (CD review)

Herbert Blomstedt, Gewandhausorchester. Pentatone PTC 5186 852.

By John J. Puccio

When I first got to know the talents of Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt (b. 1927), it was during his tenure as Music Director of my local big band, the San Francisco Symphony, from 1985 to 1995. My wife and I attended a number of his performances, and I always thought of him as a good, sturdy conductor. He never seemed splashy or flamboyant, just musically solid, so I sort of characterized him in the class of a Karl Bohm, Eugene Jochum, Adrian Boult, Eugene Ormandy, or Bernard Haitink. Friends of mine would sometimes say he was too “foursquare,” too “old fashioned,” or too much the “kapellmeister” in a derogatory sense. It’s true, he never displayed the celebrated idiosyncrasies that defined some other famous conductors like Stokowski, Bernstein, Karajan, or Klemperer, but he made up for it in concerts of simple, elegant taste.

Whatever, Blomstedt seems a perfect fit for the music of Brahms, who was himself a kind of old-fashioned, throwback composer. So, on this second-installment of Blomstedt’s survey of the Brahms symphonies for Pentatone, we start with the Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90, written in 1883, about half a dozen years after his Second Symphony. Dvorak considered the Third Symphony the most beautiful Brahms had yet produced, and a lot of people agree with him, with various allusions to the music of Schumann and Wagner helping extend this belief.

Some listeners may prefer a bit more energy behind their Brahms, and, in fact, a quick check of timings between Blomstedt and several other recordings of the Third I had on hand finds Blomstedt the slowest of the lot. This is not necessarily a bad thing, only a difference. For example, Blomstedt is slower than even Otto Klemperer in all four movements, and Klemperer usually took things at a fairly deliberate pace. Not to complain, then, because Blomstedt does mold each phrase with loving care, and the resultant product does, indeed, sound quite lovely. The Andante and Poco allegretto are especially sweet, and one can understand Dvorak’s appreciation of the piece.

Then there’s the symphony that may be Brahms’s most popular, at least in terms of the number of times it appears in concert programs, the Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98. Brahms began writing it in 1884 and premiered it a year later, so it came close on the heels of No. 3. Critics to this day continue to compare the Brahms Fourth Symphony to the best of Beethoven, so it’s no wonder that its popularity continues as well.

The opening movement with its undulating rhythms should be familiar to most everyone. Yet I couldn’t help feeling that it needed a bit more zing than Blomstedt gives it. Certainly, there is good reason for understatement here, but a touch more pizzazz might have encouraged me to become more engaged with it. While the usually melancholic mood of the second-movement Andante moderato seems a tad too dour under Blomstedt’s direction, it, too, has its moments of mellow reflection. Brahms followed the slow movement with a joyously outgoing Allegro giocoso (“quick, lively, and playful,” “full of fun and high spirits”). Blomstedt handles it delightfully if not vigorously. The final movement adds an appropriately formidable touch to the whole, a movement Klemperer treated with his usual monumental construction by which Blomstedt seems a little tame by comparison.

My overall conclusion after listening to Blomstedt’s Brahms, as good as it can be, is that I’ll content myself with the recordings of two very different Brahmsians: Otto Klemperer and Sir Adrian Boult: Klemperer with his precise, granite-like shaping and Boult with his gentler, more loving manner.

It helps, too, that on this album we get an old-school conductor (Blomstedt was in his mid-nineties when he made this recording) performing with an old-school ensemble (the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is among the oldest in the world, dating back to the mid eighteenth century). The orchestra sounds glorious, as always, the Gewandhaus concert hall giving the sound a burnished glow that adds to the richness of the performance.

Producers Renaud Loranger and Bernhard Guttler and engineer Rene Moller recorded the symphonies at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig in April 2021. There’s nothing reticent about the sound. It is big and bold, with good definition and impact. It’s in ordinary PCM two-channel stereo, but it has all the dynamics of Pentatone’s SACD releases. There is also a reasonable amount of depth and hall ambience to give the presentation a realistic effect. Quite nice.

JJP

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

Contact Information

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa