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Sonic Perfection Undermined by an Anemic and Tepid Realizati

The Cultural Observer | 07/24/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Johannes Brahms, for the assiduous perfection that resounds about his extensive musical oeuvre, is surprisingly not hailed better among music circles as a composer of perfect scores. Few others have such a keen focus on structure and beauty such that these qualities coalesce together to capture a multitude of themes and virtuosic turns of phrase while strictly keeping within form. History tells us too that the fastidious and self-critical Brahms worked a good fourteen years to complete his first symphony. Anything that preceded was discarded as the composer deferred to the lumbering shadow of a giant who had the musical world hooked by its lapels--Ludwig van Beethoven. Listeners should be grateful that the four symphonies written after 1876 were not taken for hackneyed fodder.



The era of recording has introduced a great number of titillating renditions of Brahms' symphonies. Memorable are mementos like those from Solti and the CSO, Karajan and the BPO, Dohnanyi and the Cleveland Orchestra, James Levine and the VPO, Levine again with the CSO, and a motley of other eminent conductor superstars who blew a refreshing breath of life into these fascinating works. Critics have often recognized Solti and Levine's interpretations with the Chicago Symphony as the pinnacles of this symphonic discography, touting Solti's precise, rhythmically driven vision as a hallmark specimen of big-boned Brahms; and Levine's contrasting classic direction (he was then a Szell prodigy) that emphasizes a disciplined and undulating lyricism throughout the progression of the four works. Both conductors are able to draw out an air of mystery, of destiny, of fate, elegance, despair, and redemption while traversing through their own artistic paths. The gloomy dramatic rhetoric that characterizes the Beethoven-like First is perhaps the most strongly indicative litmus test that shows how well a conductor will rein an orchestra into playing this music. Levine and Solti evince an understanding of the score that they are able to cull out the apocalyptic without donning on maudlin trappings of gloom and doom. And from there, things just keep getting better.



While two major recording from Chicago have received universal acclaim, Barenboim's version recorded during the years of his incumbency with the orchestra did little to place him under the spotlight in the same way that he did with his Wagner, Schumann, and Beethoven. What paralyzes Barenboim most is not a proclivity for producing a glossy, yet dramatically tedious wave of orchestral sound. If anything at all, he adopts a unique Karajan-like penchant for sonic aesthetics without inheriting the unvaried musical landscaping technique that blighted much of the German conductor's works during the later phase of his career. Like Furtwängler, the maestro whom Barenboim reveres as the greatest and most consummate musician of all time, he is able to see a musical score as a canvas with which he can experiment with his artist's palette, a tableau where he can shift the scenery and the characters. His fiddling with tempi and dynamics, most evident in his Wagner, recall the brand of music making that strongly mirrors Furtwängler's approach, yet Barenboim betters his predecessor by merit of his able and precise direction of the orchestra. No tremulous and quivering puppetry here.



Instead, what most likely incapacitates Barenboim in anything that harkens elements of classical structure is just that--the structure and the adherence to form. In the preponderance of Romantic works, ones where Barenboim is free to play God, he really is able to pull off something special. Few today can contest his Wagner, and his Beethoven joins with the pantheon of greats who have turned the composer into a household favorite. With Mahler, Barenboim comes off as a formidable and detailed painter of his musical macrocosms. Yet, give him a Mozart, a Brahms, or anything written with form in mind, and he is less able to experiment with the pieces without sacrificing propriety. Surprisingly, his rare forays into the Baroque have been rendered to great success (his Cimarosa). This phenomenon can be seen in his piano recordings as well--his Chopin, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn garnering much praise, while his Bach panned due to his refutations of the structure-heavy foundations of Bach works.



Hence, what is heard from this recording is not an egregiously terrible orchestral rendition. Furtwängler, in fact, had done worse in his time. In terms of technicality, Barenboim very well plays his orchestra into capturing all the little notes without stumbling through the many difficult pits and craters in this cycle. What listeners have instead is a rather anemic and pallid vision of the Brahms symphonies that is shorn of the kind of rhythmic palpitations heard in Solti's seminal cycle and the lyrical sweep of Levine's. Barenboim's direction of the First--the one that suffers most in the hands of a dull musician--is the least successful in this enterprise, underscoring little of the thundering excitement that normally throws an ensemble into a frenzy. Gloom, there is little of, and apocalyptic, it is not. It is rather odd that the most Beethoven-like of the symphonies is the one where he succeeds least.



Barenboim serves the Fourth symphony better due to its lush and strongly romantic undertones. Dramatic and passionate, the Fourth allows Barenboim to toy with his ensemble to seamlessly create a musical allusion to the French dance, to a Bach-passcaglia, to various little Beethovenian snippets, and to Grecian tragedy. The Second symphony, with its hushed and contemplative sections, puts Barenboim in a rather Wagnerian mood, allowing him to serve this music with the kind of subtlety he invests in his more complex operas. As for the third, which stresses most strongly on structure and lyricism, Barenboim seems to fall again into a pithole, and while he directs the CSO into a flawless, well-disciplined essaying of the score, there little that speaks of its deft alternations between the lyrical, the subtle, and the passionate.



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