Schubert: Hoffnung (Lieder from c. 1826). Schubert 200, Volume 3 (Streaming Review)

by Ryan Ross

Samuel Hasselhorn, baritone; Ammiel Bushakevitz, pianist. Harmonia Mundi HMM 902779 

While I’m usually lukewarm about thematic recording projects, this release belongs to an uncommonly compelling series. In the lead-up to the 200th anniversary of Franz Schubert’s death in 2028, Harmonia Mundi has planned five albums devoted to the productive last five years of his life. Each presents a curated selection of lieder from an approximate year, performed by baritone Samuel Hasselhorn and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz, with a subtitle reflecting some commonality of its selections. The first release was Die schöne Müllerin (HMM 902720), featuring the 1823 cycle. Last year came Licht und Schatten (“Light and Shadow,” HMM 902747), covering songs from 1824–25. Now we have Volume 3, Hoffnung (“Hope”), my favorite installment so far.

 

Familiar Schubert songs feel fresher when imaginative programming reshapes their complexion. Many of the inclusions here speak to longing—particularly for a person or future not yet arrived, hence the subtitle. Tropes of wind, dreams, and the seasons thread through the choices almost like leitmotifs. Taken together, these songs somehow project their own poignant atmosphere. With repeated listens it’s clear that they effectively play off of each other. Curation is very much part of the experience here. 

 

But inspired curation won’t save uninspired performances. What really makes this album (and series) work are Hasselhorn’s and Bushakevitz’s deft musicianship. Hasselhorn has a rich voice with a better-than-average vocal timbre. He brings versatility of range and expression, along with especially strong diction. You can hear these texts very well, not just the concordant pitches and dynamics. Words are not slurred. Such attributes are rarer than they should be; even big names like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sometimes underwhelm in these respects. Moreover, I can scarcely convey how refreshing it is that vibrato here does not obscure intelligibility. Bushakevitz proves himself a responsive partner. While some might accuse him of yielding too much interpretive ground, that impression probably stems from his resolute orientation toward the singer. This is a pairing sharply suited to the task at hand. 

 

Every song here receives at least a very good performance, but some accounts are outstanding. Foremost in my affections is Alinde (D. 904). Hasselhorn and Bushakevitz never lose the thread, and bring out each stanza’s own special emotions. The point of reuniting with the song’s namesake is gorgeously colored, differentiating it from prior searching exclamations. I’d say these musicians shine most in such modified strophic territory. Das Zügenglöcklein (D. 871, No. 2) is another instance where they fully exploit the savory changes of mode and melody (although I think Bushakevitz could ping the eponymous A-Flat bell perhaps a tad more prominently). 

 

However, a chief challenge with Schubert lieder is in the simple strophic numbers: what wiggle room can performers find to provide variety as words change but scoring does not? Despite his occasional text-slurring, Fischer-Dieskau threaded that needle better than almost anyone else. Hasselhorn and Bushakevitz bring off songs like Im Jänner 1817 (“Tiefes Leid”) and the D. 867 Wiegenlied with great sensitivity. I’d put their renditions ahead of most others’. But their very polish perhaps inhibits them in that last inch for such settings.  

 

If this release were purely a question of musicianship, I’d rate it north of 4.5/5. Unfortunately, I must mention something that’s easy to overlook: sound quality. A reverberant, even boomy acoustic unfairly hampers the proceedings. It’s particularly noticeable in the music’s lower registers. Since Hasselhorn is a baritone, that drags him down disproportionately. Compare this recording to others with the same repertoire, and you’ll see what I mean. That said, it’s a slight annoyance that should not dissuade you. This is still a strong conceptual series with excellent performances for the most part. I’m excited for 1827!

Bill Frisell: In My Dreams (Streaming and Concert Review)

by Karl Nehring

Bill Frisell: In My Dreams. Frisell: Trapped in the Sky; When We Go; In My Dreams; Strayhorn/Ellington: Isfahan; Frisell: Give Me a Home (interpolation of "Home on the Range"); Why?; Curtis (A Year and a Day) [dedicated to Curtis Fowlkes]; Stephen Foster: Hard Times; Frisell: Again; Never Too Late; Brewster M. Higley/Daniel E. Kelley: Home on the Range. Bill Frisell, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, loops; Jenny Scheinman, violin; Eyvind Kang, viola; Hank Roberts, cello; Thomas Morgan, double bass; Rudy Royston, drums. Blue Note 8813766

The last time we reviewed an album featuring the American guitarist Bill Frisell (b.1951), he was contributing as part of a quartet led by the veteran drummer Andrew Cyrille (you can read our review of that compelling 2021 ECM release here). I had first become acquainted with Frisell’s playing four decades ago, from the 1986 album Bass Desires (ECM 1299) (Marc Johnson, double bass; Bill Frisell, guitar and guitar synthesizer; John Scofield, guitar; Peter Erkine, drums) and 1987’s Strange Meeting (Antilles New Directions 90627-2) by Power Tools (Frisell, electric guitar; Ronald Shannon Jackson, drums; Melving Gibbs, electric bass). Throughout the 1980s, Frisell played on numerous ECM albums both as sideman and leader, having originally been recommended to the label by Pat Metheny, who had found himself unable to make a recording gig and suggested that ECM founder Manfred Eicher consider Frisell as a worthy substitute. Frisell has gone on to make many fine recordings for other labels as well, most notably Nonesuch, some of my personal favorites being 1997’s country-tinged Nashville, 2001’s foggily mystical Blues Dream, and the extended live jams featured in 2005’s East/West. In 2019, he signed with the venerable Blue Note label, for which he has released several recordings, including the fascinating Orchestras (Blue Note 583733 2-CD) from 2024, which features his trio (Frisell, guitar; Thomas Morgan, double bass; Rudy Royston, drums) together with the Brussels Philharmonic and the Umbria Jazz Orchestra.

I must admit that that when I first auditioned his latest release, In My Dreams, I was a bit underwhelmed. I was expecting the music to be energetic, with some extended passages of virtuoso finesse; instead, what I discovered was something that struck me as laid back in the extreme. Part of my expectation stemmed from having seen the Bill Frisell Trio (Frisell, guitar and loops; Greg Tardy, clarinet and saxophone; Tim Angulon, drums and percussion) in 2024 perform a live show that was an amazing two hours of stunning musicianship. I shall never forget their opening number. With Tardy on clarinet, the three musicians played 45 minutes of music that had a classical feel about it, as though long passages could have been composed by – or at least inspired by – Debussy. They went on for more than another hour, playing music both fast and slow, tough and tender. Throughout the show, although Frisell never played fast and flashy – that’s never been his style – his playing was generally energetic and assertive. But what I heard when first I streamed In My Dreams seemed to border on the lethargic.

 

Some months before the release of the new album, some friends and I had purchased tickets to see Frisell and his band in concert. We were excited to see that he was going to be bringing Scheinman, Kang, Roberts, and crew; we anticipated a rollicking, high-energy evening. However, when the album came out featuring the same lineup, but sounding overly buttoned-down, at least as far as I was concerned, I found myself losing some of my initial enthusiasm for the upcoming concert, especially given that Frisell’s tour and concert likewise were titled In My Dreams. Still, because Frisell is one of my musical heroes and because live music is always rewarding, I figured that seeing the band play In My Dreams in the flesh would beat hearing it at home. As the musicians took the stage and Frisell introduced his bandmates, a large screen behind the stage began displaying a striking, colorful abstract art image, and as the musicians began to play, the image on the screen began to change, scrolling slowly from right to left as new art worked its way across the screen as the musicians played. What they played was of course similar to what I had heard on the album, but with more drama and depth. It was an amazing evening, one that exceeded my expectations. But what was especially gratifying is how seeing Frisell and company in concert changed my perception of the album, for when I went back and listened to it in the wake of my concert experience I was now able to hear it on its own terms, without preconceived notions of what I wanted it to sound like. Listening to it with fresh ears, I heard music that communicated in simple, direct ways, but was simultaneously subtle and sophisticated. In My Dreams is a remarkable amalgam of chamber music and jazz, easily and enthusiastically recommendable to fans of both genres.                                                                                                                                                                                                     

 

Winger: Violin Concerto “In the Language of Flowers”; Symphony of the Returning Light (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

Peter Otto, violinist; Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor; Nashville Symphony. Naxos 8.559921

You know those early-18th-century violin concertos by second-tier composers that all sound almost indistinguishable? That’s how Kip Winger’s orchestral music might register when aired on classical channels in 2325. And it’s not because he comes from rock — it’s because, like most of his late Baroque forebears, he writes nice music that isn’t much more. Which would be fine, but there’s just one, typically 21st-century hangup: giving pieces flowery (literally in this case) titles the music itself scarcely justifies. This fare is no equivalent of The Four Seasons in its power of suggestion; it’s our era’s version of Giuseppe Interchangemoni’s umpteenth sinfonia, only with gaudier conceits. (I wish I could claim full credit for this joke, but it's partially borrowed from both Peter Schickele and Jim Svejda.)

 

The Violin Concerto is a case in point. It’s subtitled “In the Language of Flowers” and sports four such names ahead of their respective movements. The liner notes don’t really say why, except to mention general inspiration. But the piece works better without them. With simple tempo indications the listener wouldn’t be distracted into seeking connections between plants and content that are nowhere obvious. The work would more sensibly have been called Violin Concerto No. 1, with no botanical headings.

 

On a purely musical level, the concerto is pleasant rather than compelling. The truth is that Winger has modest compositional resources. He therefore relies on a small stock of templates to string together coherent movements: soloist passagework over ostinatos or driving rhythms, cadenza-like stretches, and tutti climaxes. The ostinatos do inject nice pep. At least you can bounce along rhythmically while you’re waiting for something to happen that never really does. These make decent claim on the listener’s attention, facile as they are. But the tutti portions are the biggest letdowns. Because he cannot merely noodle his way through them, Winger is weaker at these junctures. We need more effective perorations and memorable themes than he seems able to supply.

 

The Symphony better justifies its appellations. It employs a technique that provides a neat twist on the traditional “symphonic” ideal: use of the S.O.S. Morse code as a recurring motive and structural pillar. The “Symphony of the Returning Light” idea is thus fully discernible in the music. Winger’s craft here is also an upgrade from the Concerto. Bereft of a soloist to write for, and benefitting from his programmatic anchor, he can more effectively conceal his seams.

 

But even if the Symphony earns its title better than the Concerto, it’s limited by it, too. The intermittent Morse code (faithfully rendered in its signature electronic timbre) is easily its most memorable component. The jaunty motive that Winger overworks in the middle of the third movement (titled “Metamorphosis”) is almost an exception. But even here I had to listen once again to fully recall it; the return of S.O.S. immediately after effectively sapped what staying power it had. Something similar is true in the second movement (“Eleos”), where a simple gesture following a central hymn-like section augurs more interest but quickly sheds its promise. Without the overriding gimmick, this music is essentially boilerplate post-2000 American symphonism. We faintly discern Walter Piston, Paul Creston, and so on, but miss their heft. 

Having said all this, I have a lot of respect for Kip Winger. He’s more than some rock musician dabbling in classical composition. His music may be pleasant without being particularly distinctive, but that puts him on par with most formally trained composers. Actually, it places him ahead of too many. While excessively fanciful, he’s at least not a purveyor of loaded ugliness. If these works are unlikely to become your new favorites, I can nevertheless recommend them for a reasonably good time. 

William Mival: Vale – a pastoral symphony; Tristan – still; Pluen (Streaming Review)

by Karl Nehring

Philharmonia Orchestra; Martyn Brabbins, conductor. Signum Classics SIGCD977

This is another instance of a chance encounter with music by a composer previously unknown to me turning out to be pure serendipity. As it happens, one of the TV streaming services to which I subscribe is Amazon Music, and a couple of weeks or so ago, after watching either some British mystery or perhaps Mystery Science Theater 3000 late one night, I decided to switch to stream some music while getting ready for bed (I have a reasonably good sounding Roku Pro Soundbar – no longer manufactured, alas – with subwoofer and four surround speakers). Something that Amazon Music does that I enjoy is recommend new releases based on its perception of your listening preferences; on this fateful evening one of its suggestions was this new Signum release highlighting a work titled Vale – a pastoral symphony by William Mival. Who?! What? I had no idea who William Mival was or is, but I’m a sucker for pastoral symphonies ((Beethoven, RVW), so even though it was getting late, I fired it up to see what it was all about. Entranced, I wound up not getting to bed until a good hour later, having listened to the whole program and now excited to have stumbled across a fascinating new composer.

 

Of course, one of my first orders of business the next morning after downing my usual Rich Chocolate High Protein SlimFast for breakfast was to find out just who in the heck is this composer of the music that had so captivated me the night before. Naturally enough, as I began my quest, I started playing this music again to see whether it would still appeal to me. A quick web search yielded the information that William Mival (pictured left) is a composer, broadcaster, writer, and teacher who was born in Wales in 1959. From 2004 through 2022, he was Head of Composition at the Royal College of Music in London. As I continued to audition and enjoy his music, I was mildly surprised that a contemporary composer with such an academic background (one of his major publications, for example, is a book on Stockhausen, for instance) could write such accessible music. But that is not to say that his music is simple, shallow, least-common-denominator stuff; instead, what we encounter on this new Signum release is satisfying music of substance.

The program opens with Vale – a Pastoral Symphony, which consists of six relatively brief movements, for which I have indicated the timings: I. Senza ironia [4:39]; II. Fluido, bucolica e espressivo [2:48]; III. Fluido, bucolica e expressivo (cont.) [5:23]; IV. Lento [5:50]; V. Piu mosso, fluido [6:49]; VI. Meno messo – rubato e molto espressivo[1:47]. The CD booklet explains that Mival’s program notes for the symphony refer to the Vale of Clwyd, an area of great natural beauty in Wales. However, Mival goes on to explain that “there is nothing in the symphony that directly refers to the Vale of Clwyd. In fact, it’s far more German Romantic-centered in many places. Firstly, it’s symphonic; this was something I wanted to attempt for myself. I’d heard an especially moving performance of Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony, which I think is an absolute masterpiece, and I wondered whether that language could somehow be revisited – the directness and apparent simplicity of it, and a quality that is unmistakably British.” From the opening measures, there is at once a sense of direct musical communication by subtle yet heartfelt means. Like nature itself, there is peace and calm coexisting with underlying energy and unrest, the music building momentum through the first three movements before the more tranquil, reflective Lento fourth movement, which is warmly welcoming. The fifth and longest movement begins peacefully, but about two minutes in, the energy level begins to increase, with Mival then bringing the symphony to a peaceful, if slightly enigmatic conclusion in the brief final movement. Although the six-movement structure is somewhat unusual for a symphony, Vale is still a deeply moving and appealing work, a worthy addition to the roster of pastoral symphonies.

 

Next on the program is Tristan – still, which is the earliest of the three compositions on this release, having first been performed early in 2003. It was commissioned by the BBC, with the original idea for it to serve as a counterpoint to a concert presentation of Act III of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde – thus the unusual title. The BBC requested that Mival use the same instrumentation that Wagner had used, which Mival did, adding only a bass drum. The resulting composition is much easier to listen to than to describe. It consists of four movements that grow progressively longer, with a total duration of nearly 19 minutes. The music has a ghostly Wagnerian presence about it, like hearing Wagner in a dream. If in Vale we were musically transported to the Vale of Clwyd, we are now being taken in some dark, mythical, enchanted forest. It’s a fascinating journey. 

 

For the composer, however, the road ahead was not so smooth. According to the liner notes, “Mival’s audacity in writing a large-scale romantic orchestral score in 2003 would trigger another creative crisis. ‘The audience loved it, he recalls – it went down incredibly well in the hall, and it was nominated for a British Composer Award. But it was either too much, or too little for some I think – the words “time travel” were used on several occasions. I was taken aback. A lot of things dried up for me after that. So I concentrated on my teaching, taking virtually a ten-year break from composition. The piece that going again was Correntandemente, an ensemble piece, in 2015, and then Pluen came along.”

 

Pluen (the Welsh term for “feather”) was commissioned by the Laurence Madiano Charitable Trust in celebration of the 70^th birthday of a noted British music lover, Prince Charles, now King Charles III. According to Mival’s official program note for its premier in 2019, the piece “is a meditation on a Welsh folksong, found in an arrangement for choir by Gustav Holst; Y Glomen, ‘The Dove.’ Barely recognizable fragments of the original melody are woven into three extended variations followed by a conclusion. The durations of each variation deriving from the relative proportions of the three feathers in the emblematic heraldic badge of Prince of Wales.” Mival goes on to explain how, “I’d originally met Laurence Madiano at a fundraiser for the RCM; I sent him a bootleg recording of Tristan – still and he immediately commissioned this little piece. I thought – let’s write a folk song, basically, and see where I can go with it. I’ve always had a huge interest in Mahler, as you can probably hear in places – I’m fascinated by the way that Mahler takes simple ideas and then moulds them into something more complex. So I had a go at that with Pluen, but at the same time, I wanted to make something direct. Aaron Copland said that as a composer you need to have a language in common with the people you’re writing for, so directness has always been a part of what I do.” Over four brief movements spanning a total of approximately 11 minutes, the music of Pluen exhibits a kind of pastoral charm and a warmly British ambience that is beguiling to the ear. 

 

I have lost count of how many times I have played this recording over the past couple of weeks, but I have no doubt that I have listened to it more often than any other recording thus far in 2026. And the more I listen to it, the more I have come to enjoy and appreciate it. William Mival may well be, in the final analysis, a relatively minor composer with a limited body of work; however, that does not mean that Mavil is not is possessed of a major compositional gift, for he, Maestro Brabbins, and the musicians of the Philharmonia Orchestra have produced a recording worthy of the very highest recommendation.

Sibelius: Orchestral Works (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

Sibelius: Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22; Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47. Santtu-Matias Rouvali, conductor; Ava Bahari, violinist; Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. Alpha Classics 1215

In a CD review for an academic journal last year, I quoted a line from G. K. Chesterton’s great apologetic The Everlasting Man. The same words kept going through my mind as I listened to this recording, so I am going to share them again here: “When the Professor is told by the Polynesian that once there was nothing except a great feathered serpent, unless the learned man feels a thrill and a half temptation to wish it were true, he is no judge of such things at all.” I don’t know what Santtu-Matias Rouvali feels when he reads the Kalevala’s vivid stories of Lemminkäinen. But I feel that his performance of Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Suite with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra misses Chesterton’s standard of conviction. 

 

What the attuned listener needs for this music are two things: a keen grasp of the legendary, and a willingness to fully bring Lemminkäinen’s unbridled virility to life. The best performances capture the sense that these stories might actually be distant memories from a lost age, in which magic was still possible and events unfolded with a fairy tale’s inexorable destiny. We should almost remember being there, something akin to what Vaughan Williams expressed about seeing Stonehenge for the first time – that he’d somehow always known it. Additionally, at least in the first number there should be an atmosphere charged with overt eroticism. This is tied to Lemminkäinen’s specific characterization in Canto 29 of the Kalevala as a swaggering, womanizing “wanton.” (Consider, too, how Sibelius himself behaved when he traveled abroad with his cohorts or embarked upon Symposium benders. “Every note should be experienced,” he once advised young composers.) 

 

Rouvali is a fine musician, but he disappoints on both of these crucial levels. His biggest letdown is in failing to capture the sheer passion of Lemminkäinen’s romp with the maidens of Saari. We need a vibe akin to a young man freshly dropped off at college who is away from his parents for the first time, surrounded by beautiful women and possibilities. But Rouvali leads more in the direction of the geeky reject who withdraws alone into his dorm room to play Minecraft. Musically the biggest culprit is that he doesn’t lean into the expressive passages enough. The fervent tunes and running figures need more lustiness. Mere precision is a secondary concern. Ditto the woodwind motives making up the main theme and restated in the aftermath of the climax. They’re too “brought to heel” in this performance. Crassness should be avoided but these call for ardency. My favorite recording (Saraste with the Toronto Symphony) at times feels like its wheels are about to spin off. Never mind; those folks absolutely nail the mood. 

 

Related issues plague the remaining parts of the suite, albeit to a lesser degree. The famous Swan of Tuonela is skillfully rendered but tonally off. Once again Rouvali’s allergy to lushness dampens the proceedings. His strings supply a steely brilliance where softer resplendence is preferable. The last two pieces, Lemminkäinen in Tuonela and Lemminkäinen’s Return are markedly better, but they still lack the voltage of elite accounts. It’s not so much that Rouvali changes his approach here as he’s let off the hook by reduced lyrical demands. But even under these propitious conditions we still lack the high drama supplied by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, or by Leif Segerstam and the Helsinki Philharmonic. Lemminkäinen’s Return is the high point here and it’s middling. There’s plenty of pep, but we need a touch more atmosphere. Furthermore, Rouvali duplicates an unfortunate misstep that mars many other accounts: he directs his flutists to underplay an already piano dynamic when their “calls” enter at Rehearsal 6 and expand in subsequent measures. Following score directions is good, but not to the point where it’s difficult to hear principal motives. This material, while fleeting, is an important part of the musical narrative. 

 

Finally we come to the Violin Concerto, and I’m afraid this take just pushes average. It’s not for a lack of soloist ability. Ava Bahari has an uncommonly warm tone and excels in the passages that call for it. She’s also no slouch as a virtuoso, as this finale demonstrates. While I think she could use more rhythmic snap at times (especially in her exposed passages at the beginning), mostly she’s just contained by a reticent supporting cast. One example is paradigmatic: the Largamente theme following Rehearsal 3 in the opening movement. This melodic stretch is Sibelian GOLD – one of the signature moments in all of his output. But Rouvali practically bails on Bahari! There must be robust string section support and he ducks it. Sibelius indicated espressivo and affettuoso. What more did he need to do for performers to bare their hearts here?

 

I don’t know Maestro Rouvali, so I won’t ascribe motivations to him. But I hope he isn’t one of those post-Sibelian Finnish artists who is embarrassed by frank displays of sentiment and nationalism. If he isn’t, someone he trusts should nudge him toward a better contrary impression. If he is, I would gently tell him that some of the very things modernist snobs consider backward or hokey about his national heritage are precisely what many of us abroad love about it. We may not all have prominent positions at London publications, nor frequent the proverbial cocktail parties, but we listen eagerly and from the gut. When someone conducts Sibelius like he’d rather be conducting Stravinsky, we notice. So embrace the feathered serpents, Maestro, and the flawed heroes from your glorious folklore. They’re not a bad look. 

Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

John Storgårds, conductor; CBSO Chorus; BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Chandos CHSA 5378

Do you want the “good” news first? Here it is: this is the best Shostakovich 2 I have ever heard. It rewards exactly the kind of bloodless conducting that John Storgårds has adopted for this cycle so far. All of this symphony’s little stunts and gestures that don’t add up to anything, not to mention the clunky choral send-off, get about as sympathetic a treatment in his hands as you’re going to find. By Shostakovich’s virtual admission (he disavowed this work and its successor later in life) his Second Symphony is a 20-minute self-own, and Storgårds rises to the occasion splendidly. I’m not really sure who the joke is on – the composer, the conductor, Alexander Bezymensky (the lyricist), or any fan of this music who happens to exist. Slow-clap for all involved, I guess. 

 

Things don’t get better, but they do get stranger. To say that the best recording of Shostakovich’s worst symphony is paired here with the worst recording of his best is barely an exaggeration. Certainly, this is the dullest Fifth I’ve ever heard. The music calls for the opposite. Shostakovich wrote it at his time of greatest fear and desperation. It might have been this work or the gulag; he certainly watched plenty of his compatriots pave the way for him. At his lowest he produced arguably his finest, most distilled symphony, giving it the subtitle “A Soviet Artist’s Creative Reply to Just and Deserved Criticism.” But if you think that what he somehow meant was instead “A Soviet Artist’s Creative Cure for Insomnia,” boy does Storgårds deliver those goods. 

 

This performance of the Fifth has little excitement and next to no character. For a fleeting moment, a sharp opening creates a sense of anticipation. But after the first few bars it’s all downhill. Storgårds seems allergic to lush lyricism, because he underplays all the beautiful tunes and their supporting textures. The more agitated moments are no better. When the opening-theme variation returns in a quasi-development section with brass and piano, it should sound menacing. Instead it’s limp. The climactic march with snare drum has no panache. The loud tutti right before the creepy closing measures is sluggish and emotionally under-committed. When the flute theme over strings arrives directly afterward, the relief it imparts must be earned. But given what it follows, this effect is muted. A spirit of dramatic reluctance hangs over this first movement and sets the tone for the entire interpretation. 

 

The second movement is somehow even blander. The main problem is a pervasive mechanical manner. It sounds like someone directing his musicians to be as emotionally divested as possible. The biting wit that comes through in the best performances (such as those by Mravinsky, Bernstein, and Petrenko) is missing. With the Largo we rise to a respectable level. Storgårds’s obsession with unassuming clarity here pays some dividends. For once nothing gets bogged down, the balance is excellent, and the climactic points are full if still somewhat sterile. It doesn’t save the whole interpretation, but it’s the most defensible stretch here. 

For the second time in this performance, a decent start fizzles quickly in the finale. The opening march theme is just not forceful enough. Storgårds seems to be doing all he can here to resist the music’s innate personality. The many calmer sections following louder surges are again listless when they should provide purposeful respite. The sendoff at the end is like someone making a feeble impression of a rousing finish. But one part is particularly instructive: the tutti Romantic theme with lush strings above brass interjections. Storgårds overemphasizes these bursts in a way that distracts from this main theme. It reminds me of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s quip that the purpose of the conductor is to find out where the melody lies. One doesn’t fully appreciate such wisdom until encountering a leader whose fetish for clarity actually interferes with the music.

 

Of course we know what the problem is: there are already numerous recordings of Shostakovich 5. The pressure to be distinctive too often licenses stubborn preoccupations. I certainly don’t want this music to be unclear. But Shostakovich wasn’t a chilly neoclassicist. He was the Mahlerian heir, whose predisposition was for song, dance, irony, and the theatrical. If a conductor is not prepared to begin from such premises, he should perform something else. Label management and other gatekeepers should better recognize these mismatches and refuse to cynically countenance them. Because as it stands now, they’re cranking out too many detached or mannered performances that compare poorly with solid accounts. Yes, yes: this is a good Shostakovich 2, but who cares? It’s one of two throwaway works in his symphonic cycle, included only because it’s part of the group. There’s no reason to buy this No. 5, and hence no reason to buy the disc.

Premieres (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

Premieres. Scott Wheeler: Birds of America; Avner Dorman: Nigunim (Violin Concerto No. 2); Bright Sheng: Let Fly. Gil Shaham, violin; The Orchestra Now; Leon Botstein, conductor. Canary Classics CC26

Our first encounter with The Orchestra Now conducted by Leon Botstein did not go all that well, as we found their previous release, Transcription as Translation (AVIE AV2822), to be less than inspiring listening (you can find our review of that CD here). This time around, however, we find these same musicians on a different label and taking a different musical approach; rather than transcriptions of works from the past, they are teaming with violin virtuoso Gil Shaham (b. 1971) to present three contemporary concertos for violin and orchestra. Each of these works was in fact written expressly for Shaham, who writes, “it is an honor to have premiered and been a part of the creation of the three compositions featured on this album. I treasure my friendships with Avner, Bright, and Scott, whose inspired music has already resonated with so many, and with Leon, whose singular artistry and vision made this project happen."

Birds of America is American composer Scott Wheeler’s (b. 1952) second violin concerto. It is in the typical three-movement, fast-slow-fast format, with all three movements incorporating bird-inspired sounds and themes. Although that description might make it seem as though the music might sound gimmicky or superficial, the piece sounds at once serious and playful, pleasant and substantial. Nigunim by Israeli composer Avner Dorman (b. 1975) is in four movements with a slow-fast-slow-fast pattern. It is a more intense-sounding, driven work than Birds. There are clearly discernible Jewish influences and elements, such as Klezmer music. Let Fly by Chinese American composer Bright Sheng (b. 1955) is in three movements, played without a break, with the soloist asked to insert a brief cadenza between the second and third movements. The work’s title has a dual origin: “first, it is the aural image of the violin melody just flying off in the air, an everlasting sensation when I first saw Gil Shaham perform a concert. The second inspiration of the title came from my daughter Fayfay (homonym for ‘to fly’ in Chinese). I wrote a child rhyme named after her when she was born on November 15th, 2010. And the first phrase of the song appears a few times in the composition.” It’s a rhapsodic piece, flowing and free, with Shaham given plenty of opportunity to shine. With three substantial concertos, excellent engineering, and informative program notes, Premieres is a recommendable release.

 

Concert Report: Pat Metheny Side-Eye III+ 

 

In my recent review of the latest release from the veteran American guitarist and composer Pat Metheny (b. 1954), titled Side-Eye III+ (you can find that review here), I mentioned that I was looking forward to attending a live concert in April by the touring version of this band. And so it was that on a pleasant spring evening in Cincinnati that my wife, one of my sons, and I sat down in our front-row balcony seats to enjoy another evening of music from Metheny’s electric band. Our son Isaac, now in his 50s, had been just a young kid when we took him and his older brother to see the Pat Metheny Group (Metheny, guitar; Lyle Mays, keyboards; Steve Rodby, bass; Paul Wertico, drums; Pedro Aznar, guitar, vocals; Naná Vasconcelos, percussion) back in the fall of 1981. Since then, sad to say, both Lyle Mays (1953-2020) and Naná Vasconcelos (1944-2016) have passed on; they are both dearly missed. Around 2019 or so, Metheny embarked on what he came to call his Side-Eye project, seeking out and jamming with talented young musicians who were familiar with his music, which led to some recordings and tours. The most recent incarnation of Side-Eye is Side-Eye III, which includes Metheny plus Chris Fishman on piano, organ, and synthesizers and Joe Dyson on drums. For the recent studio album, Metheny augmented the core trio with a number of other musicians, hence the designation “III+” in the title. For the concert tour, the trio was expanded to a quintet with the addition of Leonard Patton, percussion and vocals, and Jermain Paul, bass. Metheny and his band put on quite a show, playing for more than two hours. There were tunes from the new album, such as “In On It,” “Urban and Western,” and “SE-O;” there was a solo acoustic guitar segment from Pat, alone on stage, and there were even some old Pat Metheny Group favorites, including a couple we had hear back in 1981, “Phase Dance” and “Are You Going With Me?” The two musical and emotional highlights of the evening for me were also Pat Metheny Group tunes, both from the same 1984 album, Metheny’s final release on Manfred Eicher’s ECM label, First Circle (ECM 1278), “The First Circle” and “Más Allá (Beyond),” both of which on this night featured the moving vocal contributions of Leonard Patton. “The First Circle” is a kinetic, propulsive song that just keeps cranking up the energy level until you think you are going to burst with sheer joyful excitement; “Más Allá,” on the other hand, is more reflective. On the 1984 ECM album, it was sung by a young Pedro Aznar, then soon after the passing of his old bandmate and friend Lyle Mays in 2020, the mature Pedro Aznar, now an established musician in his native Argentina, recorded the tune on YouTube in tribute (you can watch that video here). Hearing Side-Eye III+ with Leonard Patton singing this tender melody brought back memories of Pedro, of Lyle – and with those memories came tears of both sadness and joy. Such is the power of music. Should you ever get the opportunity to catch Pat Metheny in concert – whether solo or in a group – do not hesitate, because he is one of the master musicians of our time.

Beethoven: String Quartets, Op. 59 Nos. 1 & 2 (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

Chiaroscuro Quartet. BIS-2688

I’ve always been ambivalent about period instrument performances. At times they strike me as highly effective, as in John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach choral-orchestral works with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. But probably more than half the time I remain unconvinced. “It’s a different sound,” defenders tell me, “more close to the original. More authentic. You just have to get used to it.” Maybe this is true in my case. But if so, I wonder when my full conversion will finally come. Because I’ve been listening to such performances, and their supporting arguments, for nearly 30 years now, and too many of them still strike me as noble attempts at best, or gimmickry at worst.  

 

I wouldn’t call the Chiaroscuro Quartet’s interpretations of the first two Razumovsky Quartets “gimmickry.” The group is far too tasteful and conscientious for that label. But I wouldn’t place them on the John Eliot Gardiner Bach level either. Mostly what we have here are terrific musicians who are hampered by their choice of inferior equipment for this specific repertoire. They bill themselves as an ensemble that plays on “gut strings and with historical bows.” But too often in this release I hear what could be solid performances bogged down by strings that sound shrill in robust passages, with a lack of resonance that leads to clipped or hurried execution in exposed phrases. I’m sorry, but I don’t value any supposedly “authentic” sound (I see you, Kerman, Taruskin, and others) enough to tolerate such trade-offs in two of my favorite string quartets. 

 

Let’s take these two renditions in turn. The first opens with a well-judged movement, hampered only by under-volumed solo passages (including the opening cello line) and a brittle sound in places. But the following scherzo is the recording’s low point. It’s not only the sound here that’s a problem, but also a few unfortunate interpretation choices. Some passages seem rushed, and when we should better hear the interplay of the main motive, we instead have too many microgestures and under-realized phrases. A sense of the epic that pervades Beethoven’s middle period definitely should be heard here; instead, the impression is one of stickiness. With the slow movement, we run into sound issues again. The playing itself is wonderful, but the timbre is tinny and strained when it should lend better to a smooth intimacy. It almost reminds me of the uncomfortable buzz that results when a manual transmission driver tries to go too fast in a lower gear. 

 

If the Chiaroscuros slip interpretively in a couple of Op. 59/1’s movements, they’re noticeably more consistent in its successor. But to be honest, this just makes me want to hear them use modern instruments all the more. Again we have a finely conceived first movement spoiled somewhat by the gut string timbres. The buzziness creeps in, especially with all of the accompaniment figures of second and third interval oscillations. The many long-held notes in the second movement come across much the same. Contrapuntal audibility again is not what it could be in the third movement, but the finale at least is nicely done, with its fleet tempo and character concealing some of these issues.  

 

For the sake of argument, let’s say these instruments really are close to what Beethoven heard: that doesn’t mean they’re preferable now. Maybe they weren’t even then. On multiple occasions he mourned the mismatch between his conceptions and the available tools. There is no doubt in my mind that he would have preferred modern strings here. Even if he wouldn’t have, I might still disagree with him. And this is where the period instrument arguments fall apart for me. Just because these might have been the tools Beethoven had doesn’t mean they’re the tools he wished for…or should have wished for. This is what I kept thinking about as I listened. We have competent, and at times even poignant accounts here. They’re just not entirely satisfying. A niche premise can’t ultimately stand in for the experience of the music. Modern equipment is simply more capable, and when the music in question demands more (in terms of heft, tone color, resonance, and versatility of sound – things Bach’s music doesn’t demand to the same extent), I naturally regret its absence. 

Eric Whitacre: The Pacific Has No Memory (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

Anne Akiko Meyers, violin; Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. AVIE AV2853

The American composer and conductor Eric Whitacre (b. 1970) is most widely known for his choral works, many of which we have reviewed here at Classical Candor, starting back in 2010, when John Puccio gave a listen to Whitacre’s first recording for the Decca label, Light & Gold (you can find that review here). A couple of years later, John reviewed another Decca release by Whitacre, Water Night (that review can be found here). Several years later, we reviewed a deeply personal and moving release titled The Sacred Veil, this time on the Signum label (that review can be found here). In 2023, Whitacre released another version of his composition the Sacred Veil, on a Decca release titled Home that featured Whitacre conducting the British vocal ensemble Voces8 (that review is here). Those recordings all featured choral compositions; however, this new AVIE recording is purely instrumental, an elegy for violin and chamber orchestra that Whitacre composed in response to a commission from violinist Anne Akiko Meyers (b. 1970), who lost her home, “a place alive with laughter, music, and the joyful chaos of my husband, our two young daughters and crazy rescue dog – never to return,”  to the tragic California Palisades wildfires of January 2025.

Meyers goes on to recount, “yet from the ash and destruction, something profoundly beautiful emerged – much like the glowing fairy at the end of Fantasia, rising from Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. I commissioned Eric Whitacre to write a new work for violin and orchestra, and as the world changed, so did his composition. Little did I know that The Pacific Has No Memory would be born from these epic tragedies. This music has become a salve for the soul – a warm, healing embrace for my broken heart. Tender and profound, it radiates love, hope, and renewal.” In a strange twist of fate, Whitacre, who had himself lived in Los Angeles before moving to Antwerp with his family in 2024, flew back to Los Angeles on January 8, 2025, only to find, as he relates in the liner notes, “the sky over the Palisades was already smudged black, homes and histories evaporating into the quiet air… The Pacific Has No Memory takes its title from a line in one of my favorite films, The Shawshank Redemption. In it, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) dreams of a life near the ocean his past is a memory of a memory, distant and liquid – a place where the blue of the Pacific will give him a chance to start new, reborn. I hope the same for all who lost so much in those terrible fires.” What Whitacre went on to compose is a moving elegy for violin and chamber orchestra, lovingly performed here by violinist Meyers and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, who per custom and design perform sans conductor. Although the overall tone is one of sadness, it is not one of anguish. There is a feeling of calm, of peace, of resolve. Brief though it may be, this is a compellingly beautiful composition available both as a CD or via streaming. Either way, it’s well worth seeking out. 

Mahler: Symphony No. 7 in E Minor (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich; Paavo Järvi, conductor. Alpha Classics 1207

I was afraid of this: having to write another unfavorable review of a Mahler 7 recording so soon after my last one. I held out hope that Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich (okay, mostly Järvi) would pleasantly surprise me. For a little while in the first movement they did. But it soon became clear that this would mostly be another of the conductor’s herky-jerky hayrides. And here again I have the sensation of living in the Twilight Zone, with so many other critics celebrating its “freshness” and “personality.” I don’t set out to be negative, you know. But so be it. I’ll lay out my issues, and the reader can decide whether I’m wrong to be feeling gaslit yet again. 

 

As any long-suffering sports fan knows, the keenest disappointments tend to follow raised expectations. The opening movement fostered such hopes: “maybe he’ll deliver after all,” I thought. It’s solid, if a little lacking in atmosphere. The best part (here and anywhere) is the sehr breit five measures following Rehearsal 39. This is convincingly lovely. Järvi also respects (barely) the multiple Nicht eilen! indications, showing a discipline I wish he would have held onto for the rest of the symphony. This first movement plus the finale constrain him in a very particular way: they feature ample changes of mood and direction. At root Järvi is an atomist. The more a piece of music lets him be so, the better his interpretations sound. 

 

Which explains why the next movement is where things start to go off the rails. These Nachtmusik passages really need a consistently delicate touch. Järvi is simply not the man for that. The horn and other solo calls are not only too loud but unduly protuberant. The feeling is one of overworked elements, with stilted dynamics and articulation. His pace is also too fast, and more importantly too uptight. Järvi doesn’t have much respect for the “molto moderato” tag at the beginning, and he blows right past the nicht eilen at Rehearsal 79. Also, you can forget about any sense of sehr gemächlich. The worst comes at Rehearsals 84-85. The horn calls are supposed to be enchanting; instead they sound like foghorns. If you’re looking for nocturnal wonder, you’ll instead be held hostage by a man with excessive nervous energy. 

 

This third movement is almost as bad for the same reasons. Its quick motives should sound a little sharp, perhaps. But Järvi never met an accent or crescendo he couldn’t overdo, or a warning against excessive tempi that he couldn’t ignore. I mean, come on… Mahler even UNDERLINES aber nicht schnell at the start! The trio section is better. But then the main theme races back too breathlessly. I’m not sure that the “shadowy” indication calls for such a spasmodic approach. Excessive aggression robs this music of its spectral quality. 

 

The Serenade might be the low point. If there is any amoroso to this andante amoroso, I can’t feel it. If someone played the signature ostinato outside my nighttime window in this choppy and wooden manner, I’d close the shutters and turn to the ballgame on my TV. As for the rest, I think I used up all of my adjectives for “brusque” and “rushed” in the previous sections. By sheer contrast, the merely competent finale feels like the best relief in the world. 

 

I want to root for Järvi. I love his charisma and energy. But I just can’t get on board with his conducting style when it comes to Romantic repertoire. (And let’s drop the modernist nonsense: this is Romantic repertoire.) His direction is too burdened with erratic microgestures, and a distracting tendency to engage in sequences of pent-up energy followed by precipitous release. It’s like sprechstimme in conducting form – the musical equivalent of talking like that creepy dwarf in Twin Peaks. Is this what we’re reduced to now – waiting cheerfully for the next installment of a Mahler cycle we all know is mannered? Maybe I’m near-sighted, but all I see is a naked emperor.

Jóhann Jóhannsson: Piano Works (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring 

Jóhannsson: Bad; Odo et Amo/Krókódíll; Englabörn; Jöi & Karen; Flugeldar II; Já, Hemmi Minn; Ruslpóstur; The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky’s Turned Black; Melodia (III); Theme from “Varmints”; Dressing Up; Linda & Walter; Indian Wedding; He Says It’s the Future; Eleven Thousand Six Hundred and Sixty-nine Died of Natural Causes; Flight from the City; Innocence; Will’s Story I; Time to Say Goodbye; Payphone; A Game of Croquet; A Model of the Universe; The Theory of Everything; Beauty; A Sparrow Alighted Upon Our Shoulder; By the Roes, and by the Hinds of the Field; Good Morning, Midnight; The Drowned World; The Radiant City; Be Over. Alice Sara Ott, piano. Deutsche Grammophon 486 7513

The late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (1969-2018) was perhaps best known for his film scores, such as those for the movies Sicario and Arrival. His compositions often combined elements of classical, electronic, and ambient music to create soundscapes that are contemplative and inward-focused – serious, but somehow neither morose nor depressing. We have reviewed several previous releases that have included his compositions, including his Drone Mass (Deutsche Grammophon 483 7418) in 2022 (that review can be found here) and A Prayer to the Dynamo (Deutsche Grammophon 486 4870 (that review can be found here). Although Jóhannsson’s soundtracks and other compositions often featured imaginative scoring to produce their intended effects, what we have here with this new release from the German pianist Alice Sara Ott (b. 1988) is a whole new way of experiencing Jóhannsson’s music. “What’s so incredible about Jóhann Jóhannsson’s music,” she writes, is how his compositions, originally written for larger ensembles and different instruments translate so beautifully to the piano. Within this more focused and intimate sound world, the music reveals hidden nuances and enhances clarity that are so intrinsic to his music.”

When a single CD contains 30 tracks, the average length of those tracks cannot be very long, and most of the tracks here come in at under two minutes. They are brief vignettes, sound sketches that capture the essence of a mood, feeling, hope, fear, or other mental state. Jóhannsson was primarily a composer of music for film; Ott has taken brief themes from some of his scores and transcribed them for piano, capturing their essence and revealing their direct emotional and aesthetic appeal. There is a sense of innocent yearning that runs throughout this music, a yearning for something lost – something that cannot quite ever be fully restored, but which nonetheless offers a glimmer of how things could be. 

 

The music connects directly not to outward emotion, but to the roots of emotion, aided by the directness of the sound of the piano on which Ott chose to record her transcriptions of Jóhannsson’s music. “We decided to record most of the pieces on an old upright piano that Bergur [Bergur Þórisson, producer/engineer] has in his studio,” Ott explains in the CD booklet. “I was absolutely in love with it. It was one of the most beautiful upright pianos I’ve ever played on. The felted sound creates this sense of nostalgia, like memories of something that’s gone. The microphones were very close to the piano, so the sound feels incredibly present and intimate, almost as if you’re looking directly into his inner world.” 

 

Not only the sound, but also the music feels present and immediate, as though offering a look not only into Jóhannsson’s inner world, but into the inner world of the listener. Enthusiastically recommended.

Holst: The Planets; Bax: Tintagel (Streaming Review)

by Ryan Ross

Antonio Pappano, conductor; London Symphony Orchestra. LSO Live 0904

The London Symphony Orchestra's commitment to British repertoire continues apace, with these two 2024 live Barbican performances led by chief conductor Antonio Pappano. They pair an established favorite (Holst's The Planets) with a work that deserves equal love (Bax's Tintagel). My provisional opinion of Pappano is that he is a fine if somewhat inconsistent conductor, so I was curious how he'd handle this duo. I’d say he comes just under my benchmark. Here's a good and not a great Planets, followed by a mediocre rather than good Tintagel.

 

The best things about this Planets are superb recorded sound and what it does for Pappano’s handling of the numinous passages. Delicate timbres in Mercury, Saturn, and Neptune, for instance, sparkle with radiant mystery. Here is an object lesson in what’s possible when technology, orchestral skill, and conductor sensitivity work together effectively. If there were nothing more to The Planets, this would rate among its top recordings. Unfortunately for Pappano, there is. The extravert sides of this masterpiece are both more iconic and exactly where he comes up short. The marches in Jupiter and Uranus feel sluggish, with the Thaxted tune missing that last bit of earnestness. Mars is bright enough, but its aggression is blunted by a slowish main pace and positively languid middle portions. Especially regrettable is a dimmed lyrical brass when the outer sections turn to major-mode affirmation. This should sound much more battle-lusty. “Mars the Bringer of Peace Talks” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

 

Before I go any further, I’ll confess to being a committed Baxian. This composer definitely got the short end of the historiographical stick. The same modernist snobbery that bit Vaughan Williams’s reception hard following his death doomed the once-prominent Arnold Bax to a marginality from which he’s never re-emerged. To the extent his name has been kept alive it’s thanks significantly to Tintagel, of which there are now well more than a dozen recordings. There should be even more. With perhaps 2-3 of Bax’s other tone poems, it’s some of the most compelling music to come out of Britain. If a revival of his oeuvre is still possible, it will build on these treasures.

 

Which is why I’m sad to report that Pappano’s Tintagel is a squandered opportunity. If you expect him to apply his best, RVW 4-style vigor you’ll be disappointed. This is a lethargic Tintagel that captures the seascape portion of Bax’s program remarks, but perhaps only on a cloudy day. It misses what he says of Arthur and Tristan, of knights and legends. Pappano and the LSO sink beneath the music’s luxurious harmonies like a leaky barge off the Cornish coast. They don’t seem comfortable with the composer’s thick textures. Compare this with David Lloyd-Jones’s definitive interpretation from over two decades ago (Naxos 8.557145), where there is a much stronger grasp of the idiom. Lloyd-Jones knew how to navigate those big blocks of sound, and to keep his orchestra from getting bogged down. His approach is bold and virile, while Pappano succumbs to flabbiness. In a world hungry for fantasy, Tintagel has the potential to capture audience imagination. Pappano’s LSO may sparkle in Holst’s cosmic mysteries, but when it comes to Bax’s immersive world of myth, the magic simply doesn’t take hold.

 

The nice thing about our streaming age is that I can resist recommendations on the basis of whole albums. About 4-5 tracks of this recording are well worth buying and putting into playlists. I wouldn’t mind if I never heard the others again. As someone who still loves the hard product, with its booklets and cover art, I’ll at least take the win of having piecemeal options here.

Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross 

Mahler: Symphony No. 7 in E Minor. National Symphony Orchestra; Gianandrea Noseda, conductor. National Symphony Orchestra NSO0022

The conventional wisdom is that Mahler 7 is an enigmatic work. But as I have said elsewhere, it is not terribly enigmatic if you do a little homework and apply some imagination. In his program notes to the present release, Thomas May provides a bit of the former, pointing out Alma Mahler’s and Henry-Louis de la Grange’s testimony that the first four movements show the composer preoccupied with positive tropes from favorite German literature: “visions of Eichendorff’s poetry, rippling fountains, German Romanticism.” So far so good. But then May seems as hung up by the “affirmative” finale as La Grange and Theodor W. Adorno were before him. Why does this boisterous span abruptly end the symphony? Well, maybe it’s not really affirmative. If we remember that Mahler had been conducting Tristan und Isolde with great success in the years surrounding this symphony’s composition and recall what goes on in the second act of Wagner’s opera, it’s not far-fetched to see the diurnal finale as tragic in its own way. The enchanting realm of night vanishes. A forbidden tryst comes to an end. Magic gives way to bustling mundanity. 

 

Gianandrea Noseda has the bustling mundanity part of the Seventh down pat. Maybe too pat. Little in this performance suggests familiarity with Eichendorff, Novalis, or their world. Here’s the issue in a nutshell: the fast parts are too frenetically empty, and the slow parts aren’t atmospheric enough. The bolder, march-like sections in the first movement need a more bracing sound, with articulation that is sculpted instead of clangy. There is a deficit of conception here and in the Schattenhaft (“shadowy”) third movement. I was not reminded of shadows so much as a drying machine cycle. Similar misgivings manifested throughout. 

 

More disappointing still are the two Nachtmusik (“night music”) movements. Noseda almost entirely misses the importance of several elements in them. The ethereal horn calls of the first often appear with the cowbell. Mahler had a special affinity for the cowbell, associating its sounds with the last things heard as one leaves civilization to venture beyond. The timbres need a certain sensitivity here. Instead, they’re slightly plunky. Ditto the distant trumpet calls at Rehearsal 95. Think of the posthorn in Eichendorff’s Sehnsucht, or the background hunting horns in Act II of Tristan. True, the closing measures of the movement come closer to this ideal, but many other opportunities were missed. The second Nachtmusik simply needs more warmth and elegance. Clocking in at 12:08, it just zooms by, making the gentle ostinato figures seem more like a sewing machine than the evocation of evening fountains and breezes. Again, the articulations are too choppy and somewhat dry. 

 

The finale comes off better for two reasons. First, if the orchestral players are skilled (which they certainly are here), it is the hardest part to mess up interpretively. Second and relatedly, it blunts the negative impact of Noseda’s slightly spasmodic approach to quicker passages. In other words, things are supposed to sound a bit bombastic; this covers for him to a large extent. That all said, the articulation here still feels a bit less than polished; even a hectic farewell needs more differentiation than Noseda can give it. The best way to illustrate this is by calling attention to a secondary melody’s later entry at Rehearsal 269. This is a kind of rapid march parody that Noseda and his group nail. But too often the rest of the symphony (never mind the movement) sounds too much like this particular juncture! We need greater range than he can supply. If the finale’s daylight is tragic precisely because it dissolves the nocturnal world, then a conductor must make that nocturnal world palpable. Noseda doesn’t.

 

The Mahler symphonies have become a runaway bandwagon. Listening to one lackluster recording after another, I keep thinking how a command of the little things in this music adds up to big things, and how few conductors actually wield this command. If the Seventh is not as enigmatic as many let on, it nonetheless requires a robust toolkit to bring off convincingly in all its facets. I don’t need a third hand to count the recordings that truly accomplish this. Two of these remain towering benchmarks: Abbado with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (DG 445 513-2), and Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic (DG 419-211-2). Several more are fine indeed, but the group remains rarefied. Certainly Noseda and the NSO haven’t entered it.