AUSTRIAN POLAR OPPOSITES

posted by James Reel

Here are two SACD reviews I contributed to Fanfare some time ago, one disc drawing from Austrian Romanticism, the other from Austrian Classicism:

BRUCKNER Symphony No. 9 * Yannick Nézet-Séguin, cond; O Métropolitain du Grand Montréal * ATMA SACD2-2514 (hybrid multichannel SACD: 67:01)

Here’s a gloriously engineered Bruckner Ninth; alas, it’s not a very well-interpreted one. Montreal’s second orchestra, which has fared very well in earlier recordings, offers patches of drab playing here, perhaps the result of lack of inspiration from the score and the podium. It isn’t that Yannick Nézet-Séguin doesn’t have ideas; it’s just that they tend to sabotage the music. The balances can be odd, with the horns particularly distant, to the detriment of some of the chordal and melodic voicings.

Nézet-Séguin, I’m coming to realize, is an all-purpose slow conductor, like late Giulini and, more grotesquely, late Celibidache, and that has deadly results in this particular work. (But keep in mind that Giulini’s mid-career recordings of this symphony are superb; don’t overlook them.) At these tempos, the repeated figures in the first movement’s second subject immediately turn banal, and everything reaches a point of stasis just before the return of the introductory material after the exposition; this should be a moment of anticipation, not torpor. The second movement comes off all right, although it could benefit from a bit more punch, but the third movement fares no better than the first; within five minutes, the score is sinking into mud when it should be striving toward heaven. In general, Nézet-Séguin flounders when Bruckner fails to provide a strong melodic line, but even his manipulations of the best parts lack coherent motivation. Nézet-Séguin and Bruckner seem to be a poor match. James Reel

MOZART Serenade in D, K. 250, “Haffner”; March in D, K. 249 * Gordan Nikolić, cond; Netherlands Chamber Orchestra * PENTATONE PTC 5186 097 (hybrid multichannel SACD: 57:25)

Mozart wrote his K. 250 serenade in 1776 as entertainment music for a party celebrating the coming nuptials of the daughter of Salzburg’s mayor, Siegmund Haffner. This was about the same time Mozart was writing his five violin concertos, so not too surprisingly there’s, in effect, a violin concerto tucked into this work, constituting its second through fourth movements. There’s also slow “serenade” music, a couple more minuets beyond what’s in the concertante sequence, and two full-fledged sonata-allegro movements. Launch it all with the separate march that probably opened the festivities (or at least was played as the musicians made their entrance), and you have nearly a full hour of attractive Classical pleasure-music with flashes of substance going well beyond the requirements of the occasion.

Gordan Nikolić, former concertmaster of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Europe, now serves as concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. He leads this performance from the first-violin desk, and plays his solos with a singing yet pulsating line. He presides over a performance (on modern instruments) in which the stately passages carry abundant inner life, while never sounding rushed, and the fast movements sprint by with lots of punch and impact along the way. It’s a taut, vibrant performance, engaging from beginning to end.

PentaTone has made some of the best-sounding orchestral SACDs on the market, with utterly natural reproduction of ensembles given clear spatial definition, but in this project, the upper frequencies are a little harsh. That’s very unusual for PentaTone, and the only drawback to an attractive release. James Reel