Schubert [Symphony] Symphonies – No. 2 in B flat, D125 a; No. 3 in D, D200 b; No. 5 in B flat, D485 c. Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century / Frans Bruggen.

Philips (Full price) (CD) 446 100-2PH (78 minutes: DDD). Item marked a recorded at a performance in Vredenburg, Utrecht, The Netherlands in May 1995, b November 1994, c June 1990 and from 432 123-2PH (12/91).

[Symphony] Symphonies [No.] Nos. 2, 3 and 5 – selected comparison:

Hanover Band, Goodman (3/91) (NIMB)

Symphony No. 5 – selected comparison:

LCP, Norrington (12/90) (EMI) CDC7 49968-2

Frans Bruggen’s Schubert is not out to prove anything, unless it is that the use of period instruments need not box the music into taut classicism. There are the expected pleasures of the period pipers (in, say, the first variation of the Second Symphony’s Andante). But there is also licence to linger (especially in the Third Symphony’s introduction), to expressively inflect (the opening measures of the Fifth do not stay pianissimo for very long), and many humorous touches of timing. It is true that some of the tempos are challengingly swift, though less frequently than you might expect (the Fifth is much more relaxed than Norrington’s with the London Classical Players), but when Bruggen is fast the results are always aerial, free-spirited and, where appropriate, frolicsome. And it is probably fair to say that, at high speed, Bruggen’s strings are more accurate in matters of pitch and articulation than those of Goodman’s Hanover Band.

Sadly, Bruggen’s cycle thus far has been flawed by features of the engineering, and this issue is no exception. One wonders if Bruggen intended the yodelling clarinet with the first theme of the Third Symphony’s first movement Allegro to make as little impression as it does (admittedly the marking is pianissimo), but it occurred to me that the woodwind and strings balance only evens up after we are well into this movement. More serious is the complete absence of bass in the middle movements of the Second Symphony (the outer movements are fine). Added to which, Philips might have made some effort to match the recorded levels of the new and old items on the disc – the Fifth Symphony is much louder.
JS