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
By John J. Puccio
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.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comment. It will be published after review.