Whatever has Hindemith’s Pittsburgh Symphony (1958) – the sixth and last he wrote – done to deserve such wretched treatment over the years? The piece has been ignored in the concert-hall, and few commentators have had a good word to say about it, though fewer still have studied it in any depth. Yet it is one of the most fascinating of Hindemith’s late works, its unusually hard-edged orchestration arising, I believe, from the composer’s writing with an American orchestral sound in mind – not unrelated to, say, that of William Schuman. The present recording is the third I have encountered, but neither it nor its rivals do the piece justice. Rozhdestvensky starts brightly enough, but whether the idiom was just too unfamiliar for the USSR TV and Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1965, or they were just plain unsympathetic, this live performance is at worst an approximation of Hindemith’s intentions, and the sound is poor. That for Albert on CPO (like the playing) is the best of all, but his direction is anaemic; Horvath on the super-budget Pilz label (nla) gets closest to the work’s core, although he is let down by indifferent playing. What we need is for Tortelier, Blomstedt or Sawallisch to tackle it with one of their well-drilled bands.
Bruckner’s First, performed nearly two decades later, fares considerably better – indeed, it is not bad for a live account. The Rozhdestvensky is outmatched by its rivals, in whichever version one prefers, but while the Russian orchestra is far from being the Chicago Symphony, Solti on Decca (using the Linz version) is a bit too manicured for my taste. I rather like a rough-and-ready quality in Bruckner, though the present issue is too untidy to be recommendable. Wand’s reading of the Vienna version (only available as part of a ten-disc set) is, for me, the preferred option.'