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| Philips (Full price) (CD) 432 964-2PH (74 minutes: DDD). Recorded in association with TRN Groep. |
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| Comparative version—coupled as above: |
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| NBCSO, Toscanini (5/90) (R) GD60254 |
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| Symphony No. 6—selected comparisons: |
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| VPO, Bohm (5/86) 413 721-2GX2 |
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| LCP, Norrington (9/88) CDC7 49746-2 |
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| Philh, Klemperer (8/90) CDM7 63358-2 |
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Bruggen directs hard-driven, almost consciously abrasive performances of these two symphonies—symphonies that are generally thought to be among Beethoven's more genial offerings. Alongside Bruggen, the 84-year-old Toscanini seems positively accommodating; though it should be added that, apart from the two conductors' fondness for quick tempos, their approaches are radically different, with Toscanini's string players allowed to draw on a singing legato style that is generally denied Bruggen's period instrumentalists.
There is nothing wrong with a quick, highly-charged performance of the Fourth Symphony. A problem arises with the finale, which Beethoven marks Allegro ma non troppo (like Toscanini, Bruggen treats it as an Allegro molto) but there is no doubting that the work has a lot of fire in its belly. It does, after all, post-date most of the Fifth Symphony.
Bruggen's performance is certainly striking: hard-driven and dramatically intense. It also sounds well. In particular, the period drum gives off a dismal rattle that haunts the slow movement and makes the transition to the first movement recapitulation even more arresting than usual. I should add that Toscanini is better able to suggest a mood of subdued quiet at the start of the first movement. (This, despite an uncomfortably high level of tape hiss on the RCA tapes.) He also manages to end it—master that he was—without resorting to the curiously limp ritardando-diminuendo that Bruggen comes up with.
If the Fourth Symphony to some extent thrives on Bruggen's extrovert approach, the Pastoral could be said to be diminished by it. This is again a very dramatic, very physical reading of the score. The first movement is more like a punishing Lakeland fell race than a spiritually reviving walk through the woods and meadows near Heiligenstadt. The village revels start off all earthy exuberance but become slightly manic at the 2/4 section. The storm is lethal. Only the "Scene by the Brook" affords some predictable repose. It goes at several different speeds and there are occasional bouts of sour intonation but Bruggen shapes the music—above all, the inner part-writing—less haltingly than Norrington on EMI.
In the end, though, it is erratic instrumental balancing that throws the performance out of kilter. Sudden shocks—the screaming piccolo at the height of the storm—are splendid. But it is less easy to take a vanishing oboe at a critical stage of the first movement development or the generally under-nourished and acoustically ill-focused playing of the second violins. I can put up with missing pizzicato detailing at bar 383 of the first movement—one of Beethoven's happiest small orchestral fancies, beautifully brought out by Bohm and the VPO on DG—but the second violins' inaudibility as they pick up the shepherd's song of thanksgiving leaves a gruesome hole in the texture. Even without the benefit of stereo, Toscanini's NBC seconds sound glorious, as do Klemperer's, antiphonally disposed, on his 1957 EMI recording.
Klemperer would still be my first choice for the Pastoral. As a symphony, it hasn't much benefited from the period instrument revolution—rather the reverse, in fact. In some ways it is the loftiest, most visionary of Beethoven's symphonies and as such it needs a visionary to conduct it.
RO