This
is my first acquaintance with Jaap van Zweden’s gradually
unfolding Bruckner cycle for Exton, and most reviews of
earlier releases seem fairly positive (see Terry Barfoot's
review of Symphony 4). He’s
recording it with Japanese technicians at Netherlands Radio
in Hilversum,
a brave move given that one of the world’s great Bruckner
orchestras is just down the road in Amsterdam. Mind you,
he knows all about the Concertgebouw, given he was their
youngest leader at 19 and played under some of the great
modern conductors. He seems to bring accumulated experience
to bear in this latest recording of a truly massive score,
but the results for me are mixed.
The
sleeve trumpets ‘original version’, but in truth I couldn’t
see or hear much difference from my Eulenberg Nowak score,
unless my ears simply aren’t keen enough. The liner-notes
don’t even mention this point, so one can only assume that
the revisions were tiny details of texture or orchestration.
The immediate impression one gets with Zweden’s performance
is that it is going to be slow. This is not always a problem
in Bruckner, as many other conductors have proved, but
with this symphony I don’t think it helps the cause. If
you are the sort who gets frustrated with the anti-climactic
stop/start nature of some of Bruckner’s symphonic movements – and
they are particularly apparent in this work – then you
really need a firm grip on proceedings and, at least in
my view, a decent forward momentum.
What
I got here was a feeling of episodic meandering, of enjoying
the great moments at the expense of the bigger picture.
The one rival recording I had to hand just happened to
be the 1991 Concertgebouw under Riccardo Chailly, and the
comparison was cruel. Chailly clips around five minutes
overall off Zweden’s timing, and that’s quite a lot in
Bruckner. Considering the two scherzos are virtually identical,
the savings come in the three other movements, notably
the finale, and at every turn I preferred the Italian’s
approach. Zweden’s opening movement has mystery aplenty
in that slow, march-like
pizzicato string line,
but when we get to the main allegro, the tension sags.
The big climaxes are impressive, with decent weight and
sonority from the brass, but the Concertgebouw’s playing
is, overall, in a different league. The cruelly exposed
string line around 3:30-in highlights this, and where the
Concertgebouw are comfortable, effortless, soaring, Zweden’s
orchestra are rather thin and ordinary.
Zweden’s
general approach suits the adagio, where we may be quite
happy for long, slow indulgence, but even here Chailly’s
extra tautness pays dividends. The scherzos are, as mentioned,
remarkably similar, though the Concertgebouw brass is something
else.
The
finale is one of Bruckner’s most mammoth creations, complex
in its structure and as ambitious as anything in his output,
with double fugues and chorales all integrated into what
one writer calls ‘effectively a summation of Austro-German
music’. Decent as Zweden is – and there are deeply impressive
moments, such as his handling of the opening quotations
from earlier movements – he simply can’t match the majesty
and scale of his rival. The Decca engineers give Chailly
real state-of-the-art audio quality and though I expected
at least as good from a modern Japanese team, the truth
is Zweden’s recorded sound is, to my ears, a little unfocused
and over-warm. I could only sample this in two channel
stereo, so maybe the mixing process favours multi-channel
SACD. The performance is also split annoyingly over two
discs because of the timings, though it is priced as one.
The Chailly is unavailable as a single disc at present,
but there is plenty of mid-price competition that would
make me think twice about paying full for this new Exton,
most notably the classic Dresden/Sinopoli on DG or Welser-Möst
and the LPO on budget EMI. If you are collecting the Zweden
cycle, you may well be used to his broad approach and need
no incentive to buy, but if you are looking to acquaint
yourself with this big, often unwieldy work for the first
time, you will find more convincing versions elsewhere.
Tony Haywood