Anti-traditional conceptions of two German masters from Kent Nagano, both recorded last year. The Brahms Fourth inscription could have been led by Pierre Boulez twenty years ago, when his revisionist approach to sound and texture was much in vogue. Despite the consistent warmth of orchestral tone Nagano elicits from the Berlin ensemble, the structure, the spatial concept, seems small without its being particularly intimate. Phrases are measured for their balance, as are the tonal colors of the orchestral palette. It’s all rigorously objective, Karajan without worldly ambitions.
I found the Phyygian nobility in the Andante moderato dispassionate, almost catatonic. The genie comes out of the bottle, curiously, in the Schoenberg Variations, where the constant shift in foreground and background, prevalence and alescence, creates an alchemical mix of some power, if not charm. The nine variants of the Schoenberg elicit hints of their essential, albeit abstruse, humanity: a hint of Viennese waltz, a march, the octave displacements on the name BACH. The Finale of this labyrinthine piece occupies a good third of its entire breadth. Nagano proves his musical mettle in the forty-odd tempo changes that he manages to link together without tearing the main pulse, a trick already adumbrated in the passacaglia of the Brahms. Aside from seeking Nagano’s art for its own virtuoso powers, only a lover of the Schoenberg score would find musical satisfactions here. The votaries of Brahms have alternative shrines at which to bend the musical knee.
— Gary Lemco
