BEETHOVEN: Overture to “Fidelio,” Op. 72c; Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, Op. 55, “Eroica” – Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Guenther Herbig – Royal Philharmonic Masterworks RPO 28160, 54:30 [Distr. by Allegro] ****:
SCHUMANN: The Four Symphonies – Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Grzegorz Nowak – Royal Philharmonic Orchestra RPO 28160 (2 discs), 68:50, 64:30 [Distr. by Naxos] ****:
As Mark Twain said of his own rumored demise, the news of the death of the classical music recording industry has been somewhat exaggerated. Not that some of the major players haven’t just about pulled out, putting flocks of artists out to pasture. Or so it might be supposed. Some of those artists, such as EMI’s Barbara Hendricks and DG’s Gil Shaham and John Eliot Gardiner, have started their own proprietary labels, thank you very much, as have a few of those aggregates of musicians known as symphony orchestras. Among prominent such bodies are the Royal Concertgebouw, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and San Francisco Symphony. More power to them, I say.
The recording of the Schumann Four Symphonies is the first I’ve sampled from the Royal Philharmonic’s own proprietary label, and apparently it’s in friendly competition with Allegro Corporation, which produces what it calls the Royal Philharmonic Masterworks Audiophile Collection. This is advertised as “a special series of audiophile recordings focusing on the masterworks of classical music.” Whether I’d have thought of the Beethoven CD in the context of audiophile recordings without the intervention of the Allegro marketing team, I’m not sure. It’s a very nice job, certainly. But more about the engineering later.
The advertising fluff inside the booklet further states that this series features “Music making of the highest level. . .performed with a rarely heard abandon that excites and thrills over and over again.” That’s probably a lot of weight to put on the collective shoulders of the orchestra and conductor Guenther Herbig, who are thus expected to give new life to works that have been recorded hundreds (thousands?) of times before. The discography at the “Complete Eroica” web site lists 497 recordings, and somehow I think this is shy of the mark. (The site hasn’t been updated since 2008. How many dozens have slipped into the catalog since then?)
Then again, there have been so many recordings that it would be the height of arrogance to promote two or three as THE classic recordings of this symphony—or to say there isn’t room for another fine performance on CD, which Herbig’s certainly is. As with many modern conductors, I feel Herbig has a tendency to over-manage certain details, but he’s far from the micromanaging conductor that critics decry. Just a few spots in the first movement where Herbig takes unneeded ritards, especially at the end of sections, I find unnecessary; I think Beethoven can be relied on to make his own points without special conductorial intervention. For the most part, however, Herbig keeps things moving smoothly, building climaxes with real power, finding just-right tempos for the two inner movements and for the multifarious sections of the variations-form finale.
I thought he might be dawdling a bit too much over the slow introduction to the Fidelio Overture, portending fussiness to come, but again Herbig and the Royal Philharmonic turn in a spirited athletic performance, making this a fine curtain raiser.
As to the engineering, as I say, I wouldn’t necessarily call this an audiophile experience, but perhaps that has more to do with the repertoire than with the recording, which is certainly very fine. The sound has a believable sense of spread and depth, there is a pleasant bloom to the strings, especially violins; the winds are clean and present; the brass and timpani forcefully there. The grand climax in the first movement coda, just before the final run-up to the cadence, is about as close to audiophile as you can get in this symphony. Still, if I want audiophile Beethoven, I’ll turn to Wellington’s Victory on Telarc. So what if it’s junk? It’s fun junk!
The Schumann Four Symphonies from the Royal Philharmonic’s own label is not touted as special in the recording department, but it, too, is well-engineered. Recorded at Cadogan Hall in London (interestingly, Allegro supplies no recording data for the Beethoven), the orchestra has a bit less bloom. The upper strings are maybe a touch less silky, the brass a bit less, well, brazen, though Schumann’s often attractive writing for the winds emerges with excellent clarity. Did I say “attractive writing for the winds”? Yes. While Schumann has often been taken to task for his supposed poor orchestration, and some conductors and critics still repeat the mantra, few conductors nowadays tinker with Schumann’s symphonies as they did in the past. I think the excellent authentic-instruments performances of Roy Goodman (RCA) and especially John Eliot Gardiner (DG) in the 90s finally gave the lie to the idea of Schumann as inept orchestrator. These performances seemed to restore Schumann’s canvases, bringing out colors and textures that conductors once felt required the editor’s red pen to unleash.
Perhaps it’s a function of the recording, which as I say isn’t as brightly lit as the Beethoven and also has a little less perspective, but Nowak’s Schumann symphonies don’t have anything like the lightness that Goodman and Gardiner (or Szell, for that matter) brought to them. The bass and midrange seem to be accented, maybe even to the detriment of the treble, and this gives the works a great deal of heft. The notes to the recording speak of the climaxes in the finale of the Second Symphony as building up in a manner that would be “worthy of Bruckner or Mahler.” This leads me to wonder if Grzegorz Nowak isn’t, indeed, trying to show the ways in which Schumann is a forerunner of these composers, whereas Gardiner, for example, makes one think of Schumann’s contemporaneity with Mendelssohn. As long as the performances prove convincing, this seems to me a valid approach. And I find Nowak convincing.
As with all thrice-familiar music that has been approached in a great variety of ways over the years, I have my prejudices. In my favorite Schumann symphony, the Second, I wanted a bit more impact from the brass in the first movement. I wanted Nowak to make more of that wild, chattering dialog between horns on the one hand and trumpets and trombones on the other that occurs at the start of the recapitulation; I wanted more oomph in the huge brass perorations in coda. Also, I was disappointed to hear Nowak slow up toward the end of the finale. Some conductors try to make points by going the other route (Kubelik and Marriner are the worst examples I can think of), but slowing down is just as wrongheaded, as far as I’m concerned. Again, let Schumann make his own points, I say. On the other hand, Nowak’s flashing juggernaut of a scherzo is just right, and the great, counterpoint-rich slow movement is just as finely done.
One feature that I noticed very prominently in Nowak’s performance was the restless sea of string tremolos over which the first movement sails. It underscores the nervous sensitivity that Schumann complained of at the time he wrote the work; the composer confessed, “I sometimes fear that my semi-invalid state can be divined from the music.” Certainly, Nowak makes us feel the sense of anxiety and dread that Schumann tried to banish with the call to arms in the brass that starts the work and recurs throughout. Nowak does such a good job establishing the victorious statement of the last movement that I’m sorry he had to resort to his slow-mo treatment at the very end.
Similarly, despite the fact that the performance of the Fourth Symphony is mostly very satisfying, I wish Nowak had taken Schumann’s strange tempo markings in the finale to heart. Schumann marks the final pages Schneller (“faster”) and finally Presto. This recalls the composer’s near-impossible markings for the last movement of his Second Piano Sonata (Presto-Prestissimo). I think if a conductor whips the symphony finale up to the state of frenzy that Schumann implies in his tempo markings, the payoff in terms of excitement is undeniable. Nowak settles for medium-high heat.
Overall, though, this is a very solid set that bears repeated listening, which is the hallmark of any successful recording. The performance of the Third Symphony (“Rhenish”) seems especially on the mark to me, with a fourth movement (supposedly portraying a solemn occasion at Cologne Cathedral) building to another one of those climaxes of near-Brucknerian grandeur. Nowak, the Royal Philharmonic’s principal associate conductor, has an obvious rapport with his players, and they play very well for him throughout.
I first encountered Nowak through his recording of symphonies by Carl Czerny on Hänssler. I thought he made a real case for a composer who’s hardly known as an orchestral composer, and I was interested to hear what he could do in the standard repertory. I’m happy to report that Nowak’s Schumann symphony outing is, on points, a success.
— Lee Passarella
