BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 – NBC Symphony Orchestra/Arturo Toscanini – Pristine Audio

by | Apr 30, 2009 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 – NBC Symphony Orchestra/Arturo Toscanini

Pristine Audio PASC 157, 35:45 [www.pristineclassical.com] ****:

Recorded in concert at Carnegie Hall, Saturday 10 February 1951 and broadcast by NBC Radio, this elegant realization of the sunniest of the Brahms symphonies directed by the Maestro in a particularly lyric moment. Auditors will note the lovely, homogeneous sound of the NBC strings throughout this glowing performance. Toscanini emphasizes the Apollinian grace of the first movement, his strong training in Brahms via Fritz Steinbach exerting itself in long, plastic phrases and soft dynamic transitions in the cellos and tympani, the metrics (Brahms loves hemiola shifts in this work,  the motion often approaching a waltz) silken in their subtle variety. Smart, liquid flute playing that transitions into the French horn and oboes, though Toscanini asserts the martial rhythms in rather a four-square manner. No first movement repeat, but the scale of the music, its alternation of heroic and sighing, nostalgic impulses, embrace vast panoramas of emotion. Listen to the singular, leisurely transition over a rolling tympani to the recapitulation in D Major, and the subsequent reappearance of the songful cello melody, Paradise Regained. The extended coda, in which Brahms seems to reconstruct a new development section, projects a nervous girth that finally settles, via the French horn and deep strings, into philosophical acceptance.

Toscanini makes almost a Verdi baritone aria of the B Major Adagio theme, answered in kind by higher strings and woodwinds. The French horn sets the kind of sequence that Brahms favors, two or three-note phrases he can tone up or down by small degrees of the scale. The full surges of emotion possess grandeur and poised yearning in step-wise motion. The agitation becomes pronounced; and, under Toscanini, the “adagio” designation seems demonized. The unrelenting steadiness of pulse is partly responsible for illusion of speed Toscanini projects, but there is no doubt that a Herculean drive operates in the often solemn last pages, a kind of tidal impetus of which Matthew Arnold takes note in “Dover Beach.”

The G Major Allegretto grazioso plays like a lovely, outdoor serenade whose second theme dances in darkly Mendelssohnian figures, the string sound crisp, as are the winds and horns, supported by pizzicati strings and heaving basses. Again, Toscanini’s ability to elicit martial character from the otherwise bucolic sensibility both disarms and delights us; when he does want “cantabile,” a song, the NBC proves the soul of vocal responsiveness. The major/minor hints in the coda already point to the Third Symphony. The demon is loose for the last movement, Allegro con spirito in D Major. This is virtuoso NBC Symphony execution, where the warblings above and the churnings below coalesce into a onrush of Brahms sound, the full treatment. The stretti themselves jab us with pungent, articulate acceleration that pulls back, goes forward, and then resumes in the manner of a frenzied ritornello left over from the Op. 16 Serenade. The working out in sonata-form merely accentuates the dialectic in Brahms between Dionysian energy and a fear of self-revelation, a reticence to which Toscanini refuses to coddle. A force of Nature, this Toscanini, who delivers a D Major Symphony that appeals to us instinctively, a most gratifying performance.

— Gary Lemco

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