This disc is planned so that we hear the two shorter works first. Abbado's interpretation of the Haydn Variations is more searching, more illuminating than any other modern version I know. Each variation is richly characterized—the fifth, for example, is delivered in a tough, insistent fashion, while the sixth has a graceful, wistful quality, yet with accents which are still quite sharply pointed. Tempos are finely calculated so that every episode relates clearly to its neighbour, and the work thus emerges as a more than usually powerful entity. Nanie is also given a beautifully shaped performance, with excellent singing from the Berlin chorus, and the work's mood of calm, proud stoicism is satisfyingly captured.
After such excellence, Abbado's somewhat ruminative conducting at the outset of the Symphony causes the temperature to lower just a little. As in the preceding items, he searches deeply into the music, but at a tempo which is marginally on the slow side. It seems for the odd moment or two that the basic pulse is about to congeal, at least partially. Then momentum picks up, and although the reading is still expansive and quite romantic in feeling, with noticeable changes of pulse, there is also a good sense of a developing symphonic structure, with increasing strength apparent as the movement moves towards its climax. The slow movement is not a success, however, for at a fairly slow basic tempo Abbado seems to become lost in the admittedly beautiful sounds produced by his orchestra. The result is a stodgy, gelatinous, solemn reading, which lacks spirit and feeling. Abbado conducts the third movement in a direct, exuberant fashion, but then his very deliberate statement of the finale's passacaglia theme precedes a journey through the variations which fails to make its way with sufficient momentum, and the movement doesn't quite hold together.
Nanie is recorded quite vividly, but in the two orchestral items a slightly uncomfortable, reverberant acoustic tends to blur detail, and the upper string sound sometimes develops a glassy quality. Carlos Kleiber's strong, dramatic performance, also on DG, remains first choice for the Symphony, but readers who can tolerate dated sound should also consider Toscanini's extraordinarily pungent and expressive live 1935 recording on EMI.'