MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 56 “Scottish”; A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Overture, Op. 21 & Incidental Music, Op. 61 – Baltimore Symphony Orchestra/ Sergiu Comissiona – Vox NX-3046CD (7/1/24) (67:41) [Distr. by Naxos] *****:
I had the good fortune to interview Romanian conductor Sergiu Comissiona (1928-2005) in Atlanta, after an especially successful concert with the ASO. I asked him about his main musical influences: without hesitation he cited the name of fellow Romanian Constantin Silvestri (1913-1969).
“Silvestri insisted on any ensemble’s capacity to make colors, and to this end he worked incessantly. He fixated on his orchestra’s string section, their bow positions, their capacity for inflection without excess. It was in the same year of his passing that I took over the Baltimore Symphony, intending to extend Silvestri’s methods to an orchestra I could mold into an ensemble suitable to my expectations.”
Vox restores the performances from 9 March 1974 (Symphony infiltrates. 3) and June 1977 (Midsummer Night’s Dream), respectively, the latter in its first appearance on disc. The excellent production qualities derive from Elite Recordings producers Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz (originally for the Turnabout label), with remastering by Andrew Walton. From the outset of the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the diaphanous speed of execution, coupled with immaculate tonal accuracy, proffers a magical experience, as both Shakespeare and Mendelssohn intended. The woodwinds and brass, too, elicit a warmly plastic contour for the mirthful brays and grunts, appropriate to Bottom’s transformation into a donkey, the love object of an enchanted Titania. The skittish movement of Puck, for whom all mortals are fools, infiltrates the string line, punctuated by the repeat of the opening chords in gossamer tones of love’s transformative powers. That the astonishing counterpoint testifies to a seventeen-year-old talent perhaps trumps all other details of this particular opus. The Baltimore woodwinds score again in the feisty 1843 Scherzo, dazzlingly fleet. The BSO French horns take the berries in the touching Nocturne, where sleep will encourage Puck to enact Nature’s mischief. The ubiquitous Wedding March enjoys brazen, motor pomp and circumstance without cliches. Besides uniting the characters Hippolyta and Theseus, the wedding signifies that bond of Man and Nature at the heart of Thalia, the Comic Muse. For sheer color pageantry, this rendition will satisfy any ardent admirer of the Mendelssohn score.
Comissiona’s approach to the Scottish Symphony, whose slow etiology extended 1829-1842, assumes a distinctly linear progress, with the expansive first movement’s main theme’s onset from the clarinet soon growing into compressed tempest of emotion, but without the mythic scope that we receive from Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London. We do, however, bask in the exalted patina Comissiona coaxes from his various choirs. The famed second movement, Vivace non troppo, contains martial and folk elements combined in a dazzling exhibition of orchestral scoring; literally bubbling with Highland spirits. The splendid Adagio ruminates in selected echoes of Beethoven, from, respectively, the Seventh Symphony and “Harp” Quartet. The expressive, noble, warmly melodic content often suggests the influence of Robert Schumann, though Mendelssohn’s capacity for “songs without words” never falters and hardly requires motifs from others. Mendelssohn marks the final movement Allegro vivacissimo – Allegro maestoso assai – moving from the third movement attacca, and launching into an animated Allegro guerriero, to mean a warlike sensibility. An alternately sparkling and majestic polyphony moves us to the second subject, which too exhibits the composer’s elfin touches. Without formal preparation, the music, having halted temporarily, embarks on a victory crusade, swelling with regal authority. It has become time to credit Comissiona’s potent battery of timpani, brass, and cymbals, all providing an irrepressible impact that well defines his idiomatic sense of style.
—Gary Lemco
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