As I was saying in September, it is back to basics in the United States, with Dohnanyi in Cleveland, Masur in New York and Sawallisch in Philadelphia. Now, with the ink barely dry on my review of Sawallisch's superb new Philadelphia Bruckner Fourth, there arrives a powerful new account from Masur. Unlike the Bruckner Seventh (Teldec, 3/92) which Masur recorded with the orchestra more or less the day after he arrived in New York, there is now a dear sense of an orchestra that is both properly directed and better attuned to the matter in hand. It is many a long year since the New York Philharmonic sounded as German as it does here.
Masur doesn't differentiate between the movements—the opening triptych and the finale—as spectacularly as Sawallisch does, but it is a powerful and imposing performance none the less. If it isn't ultimately a match for the Sawallisch, or the gloriously craggy Skrowaczewski version with the Halle, it is probably because it is a live recording. Not that this is entirely the players' fault. The playing is often exceptional—without ever perhaps being quite as consistently fine as that of the Philadelphia or Halle orchestras. (No doubt I shall be accused of wrapping myself in the Union Jack but when it comes to truly characterful solo wind playing, the Halle players are often ahead by a street.) No, one of the problems is the audience. Quiet as church mice for much of the time, they are palpably bored in those stretches of the slow movement where Masur's reading becomes unnervingly introspective. Wonderful as it is to hear an orchestra, especially an American, playing with such breathtaking quiet, things can lose focus in a funeral march that is already dangerously given to gazing at its own reflection for long periods from a great distance. How much better Skrowaczewski judges all this, and Sawallisch too.'