Some years ago Kurt Masur recorded all four Brahms symphonies with the Leipzig Gewandhaus (Philips, 9/79 – nla), and I can remember thinking even then how incredibly bland they were – attentive to detail, yes, but woefully underpowered. This New York cycle has greater heft and import, but still falls short of distinction. The First Symphony opens solidly (the contrabassoon’s low C is clearly audible) and when, at 2'16'', the oboe announces the Introduction’s second set, and the flute responds, followed by the strings – one senses a master craftsman at the helm. However, the main Allegro is limp, even though brass and lower strings sound impressive. The trouble is that although Masur commands the appropriate level of tonal weight (sample the movement’s closing bass pedal), he doesn’t carry it terribly well. The Andante sostenuto is better (again, basses excel), there’s much warmth to the playing but little sense of ‘lift’ or lightness. Take the eloquent exchange netween oboe and clarinet at 2'45'', a passage that Toscanini habitually sent into songful rapture but that Masur keeps on a relatively tight rein; there’s no lightness after the third movement’s trio, no real force to the finale’s pizzicatos and little sense of exultation for the symphony’s thrilling home straight. The Tragic Overture is similarly urbane but again, there’s little suggestion of flexing muscle.
The Third Symphony opens well, though the strings lack passion and I was surprised that Masur omits the repeat. The recapitulation is fairly powerful and the finale well paced, but the best moments are to be found in the middle movements. In fact, I’d say that, throughout the cycle – or the three-quarters of it that’s reviewed here (No. 2 was discussed in May 1993, and joins these three new discs in a complete set of the symphonies) – the gentler moments come off best. Masur leans heavily on to the first note of the Fourth Symphony and prompts some soaring string lines a little later on (at 1'34''). Note, too, how carefully he shapes the woodwind phrases at around 4'56'' and those gentle string surges at the heart of the development section (at 5'56'' and beyond). The second movement is better still, with beautifully balanced cellos and violins at 4'06'' (the first statement of the lyrical second set), a gentle return of the same theme thereafter (8'33'') and a fine roll to the lower strings just prior to the movement’s close (11'10''). The scherzo is lightweight and uneventful (there’s an odd rustling between 2'49'' and 2'59''), the finale effective only until the woodwind variations (which are terribly sleepy), and the coda lacks both momentum and gravitas.
The other two makeweights are more note-worthy, the agitated central section of the Schicksalslied suggesting a level of drama that would have been welcome in the symphonies (the Prelude and Postlude are also beautifully handled) and the Haydn Variations extremely fine both in detail and in overall conception. Being a great admirer of Masur – especially in Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann – I cannot really disguise my disappointment with a set that, although live (audible coughs suggest a minimum of post-concert ‘patching’), lacks both fibre and focus.
As to competition, the situation is enlivened by the reappearance of three enjoyable cycles from the 1950s and 1970s. Eugen Jochum’s Brahms might be described as ‘slimmed-down’ Furtwangler. Many of the gestures are remarkably familiar: the dynamic rise and fall of the First and Third Symphonies’ first movements, for example, the latter in particular rocketing or relaxing very much in the style of Furtwangler’s broadcast performances. The Fourth witnesses parallel accelerations in tempo (first and last movements especially) while the Second ‘opens out’ very much a la Furtwangler and the finale’s heady peroration will have you leaping from your armchair. Still, it would be cruelly misleading to suggest that Jochum’s Brahms is merely an urbane re-enactment of his great predecessor. There are many points of departure, not least in the way he blends and dovetails instrumental lines and the sort of sound he draws from his respective orchestras – so much leaner than Furtwangler’s, especially in Berlin. The trouble is, which cycle to choose from. DG’s Originals reissue has the benefit of superb mono engineering: listen to, say, the First and Third Symphonies and hear how expertly simultaneous lines are blended into a single channel without any significant loss of clarity. The playing, too, is extremely polished – sleek in the faster movements (the Second’s finale and the Fourth’s Allegro giocoso) and warmly blended in the more lyrical episodes (No. 4’s Andante moderato, specifically, the second set). The LPO recordings feature a bigger, broader sound-stage, wider dynamics, greater spontaneity (especially in the Second and Third Symphonies) but rather less in the way of executive refinement. Furthermore, the first three symphonies include their important first-movement exposition repeats (the DG set omits them), which is why EMI had no option but to spread the cycle across three CDs. Nice though it is to have Tennstedt’s flexible, broadly etched accounts of the Ein deutsches Requiem and the Schicksalslied as makeweights (a rather inappropriate term in this instance), I question the wisdom of issuing the cycle as two two-disc sets rather than as three single discs. Still, both sets prove extremely enjoyable, although my own preference is for the more securely focused and more spatially economical Berlin cycle.
Kurt Sanderling has also recorded the Brahms symphonies twice, but in his case what started out as solid, patient and well-built (in the RCA/Eurodisc set reissued here) broadened significantly, and in doing so stressed the epic element that was always implicit in the first recordings: the first movement of the later First Symphony is slower than its predecessor by over two minutes. Sanderling’s great strength is in the way he handles Brahms’s choppy, obdurate string writing, whether in the First Symphony’s strutting first movement Allegro or the opening Allegro non troppo of the Fourth. And if Jochum recalls the Dionysian flight of Furtwangler live, Sanderling approximates more the stoical, structure-conscious Klemperer. Tempos are consistently held firm, the lyrical passages allowed their due only within a solid structural frame (the Third Symphony’s middle movement, for example) and first-movement repeats omitted. Sanderling’s better-recorded Berlin Symphony cycle reinstates the Third Symphony’s repeat, but not the others.
As ever, it’s the Third Symphony that underlines specific interpretative differences between conductors – the first movement especially, a vigorous Allegro con brio that, for some reason or other, defeats even the greatest maestros. Granted, both Furtwangler and Jochum build huge bridges with the opening brass chords, but thereafter they launch the main body of the movement as both con brio and the prescribed forte passionato. Sanderling, on the other hand, takes a majestic, even marmoreal option that seems to me quite misguided: the gestures are grand, certainly, but the music remains rooted to earth. And if ever a piece said ‘come fly with me’, it was the first movement of Brahms’s Third Symphony.
So, summing up, Sanderling on Classical Navigator is sturdy, intelligently phrased, warmly played, fairly well recorded (the strings are a little grainy) and supplemented by equally well-considered accounts of the Haydn Variations and Tragic Overture. Jochum in Berlin is excitable, pleasingly single-channel and smoothly dressed; in London, he’s excitable, twin-channel and rather more rugged (and don’t forget those repeats), but my own personal choice for a complete cycle would be – and here I call on the odd guiding adjective – intelligent Szell, inspirational Furtwangler and virile Toscanini among the ‘old masters’, and among the digital contenders – lyrical Kubelik and bracing Gunter Wand.'