Customer Reviews

Four Symphonies

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

At long last, we have the four Schumann symphonies, plus Manfred Overture, released in the awesome Mercury Living Presence series. There is an aura of exuberance here not commonly found in symphony orchestra recordings. Paray leads his Detroit Symphony, well-trained in his Gallic style, in this rip-roaring set. If you doubt that Schumann lives, you owe it to yourself to listen to these enthusiastic renditions. The instrumentalists are thoroughly rehearsed and come across as very secure. The First Symphony, in particular, seems to me to be the personification of the joy of life. This is Schumann played as it should be played, and I dare anyone to call these performances routine. Mercury's sound, which was always way ahead of its time, is brilliance anew in these releases. If anything, the recordings sound newer and fresher than when they were first released on LP. Highly recommended.

Paul Paray was one of the first conductors to go back to Schumann's own original orchestrations of these symphonies. Before that, many a conductor had tweaked and fiddled with the scores to "enhance" the melodic lines -- and also to "heavy them up" in that stereotypically Germanic manner. Perhaps it took a Gallic conductor like Paray to treat Schumann's delicate-yet-vibrant scores like a watercolor rather than an oil painting. (Paray, hearing one of Schumann's symphonies performed with a doctored score, was quoted as saying to the conductor after the concert, "Nice piece. Who wrote it?")

Paray is most effective in Nos. 1, 2 and 4. The Rhenish is not quite as special, but certainly OK. Nothing like the travesties you'll hear with Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic. Like others who have reviewed this CD, I also hear the high-pitched whine in the 4th symphony. It's not unbearable, but why couldn't the engineers have gotten rid of it?

There isn't much more to add to what's already been said except to tack on a star. This is far and away the most beautiful Schumann committed to disk, the type of lost Gallic conducting art of which Paray was THE master--a unique practitioner who always gave a great performance, no matter what the material.

Wilma Cozart has done an admirable job of cleaning up hiss and tubby bass from her original recording sessions in the 50s--and it seems the mono Fourth has had next to nothing done to it because the antecedent was so good. The Second had to be worked again from her binaural mixdown instead of the three channel version originally used--the 3-channel was "unavailable" according to the notes. Don't throw out any of your vinyl, especially the No. 2, since it sounds better than this reissue which lacks the wide stereo spectrum.

However, these are minor caveats when we're dealing with a production of this standard. The competing Bernstein is frenetic and ragged, Szell gives us the riveting-machine approach in that irritating Severance Hall sound which had a range from "f" to "ffffff" and little else. If the Solti is back out, it is interpretatively a cipher, and Inbal, while enjoyable and clear-visioned is certainly not on the Paray level.

Paray's long-awaited set is the choice from all standpoints and isn't likely to be bettered anytime soon. It's been around 40 years now and it hasn't had a serious approach yet.

Wow. I haven't seen anyone write like that since girlfriend who fancied herself a poetess wrote me a long Dear John letter. Reading it reminded me that I haven't used the words "anguished" or "coruscating" in a sentence in way too long.

Well anyway, deese be reel good'uns. I'm not sure where anyone is still hearing Schumann sounding like mud these days, it still comes up in reviews as almost a trite cliche, and as far back as Szell conductors have been careful to make his music not sound like mud. It doesn't sound like mud here at all. (If you want to hear Schumann sound like Webern check out the amazing Orchestral Works collection conducted by Florian Metz on the obscure EBS label--the weirdest and wonderfullest Schumann I've ever heard. It's listed on Amazon and well worth the price although it'll shock the bejeebers out of you).

This set is great, the fast tempos are welcome, the playing is excellent, and the whole thing is exciting as hell. Symphony number two is a real standout with the first movement set to the max for drama. I hope this doesn't stay out of print too long.

There isn't much more to add to what's already been said except to tack on a star. This is far and away the most beautiful Schumann committed to disk, the type of lost Gallic conducting art of which Paray was THE master--a unique practitioner who always gave a great performance, no matter what the material.

Wilma Cozart has done an admirable job of cleaning up hiss and tubby bass from her original recording sessions in the 50s--and it seems the mono Fourth has had next to nothing done to it because the antecedent was so good. The Second had to be worked again from her binaural mixdown instead of the three channel version originally used--the 3-channel was "unavailable" according to the notes. Don't throw out any of your vinyl, especially the No. 2, since it sounds better than this reissue which lacks the wide stereo spectrum.

However, these are minor caveats when we're dealing with a production of this standard. The competing Bernstein is frenetic and ragged, Szell gives us the riveting-machine approach in that irritating Severance Hall sound which had a range from "f" to "ffffff" and little else. If the Solti is back out, it is interpretatively a cipher, and Inbal, while enjoyable and clear-visioned is certainly not on the Paray level.

Paray's long-awaited set is the choice from all standpoints and isn't likely to be bettered anytime soon. It's been around 40 years now and it hasn't had a serious approach yet.

Since I listened for the first time this monumental Symphony I have considered this was the seminal seed of inspiration to Gustav Mahler. Somehow this work the main ingredients of later Mahler's works.

The existential pathos, the struggling presence of the death, the unavoidable and sometimes unbearable shadow of the anguish moves on underneath the score with this obsessive and exhilarating frenzy of apparent calm. The strings and woodwinds announce this troubled First Movement superbly depicted by this director. In honor of the truth there is a comfortable sign of tense peace that reminds me to the last moments in Werther. This work is the best built Symphony, the epitome of the late Romanticism echoes : a real transient stage between the last echoes of the classic Romantic age and the new musical conceptions of Mahler. The sad noblesse of the Second Movement for instance is one of the most relevant examples of the loneliness without any faith's particle: the man and his circumstance, not in the classic desperation of Pyotr Illich Tchaikovsky, visibly immersed in another anguish level, but with the gaze placed in a real premonition of the future.

The genuine expression of the desperation and the lack of any kind of salvation device as the faith must be exposed without merciless if you want to win with this hard to conduct work. The Third Movement is written with a sharp autumn scream . the composer is just looking behind and suddenly the vision comes back the strings work out as the mother's arms : if you don't remark this aspect you are absolutely divorced of what's going on in the deepness of Schumann.

Finally the last Movement pretends to emerge from the ashes to announce a redemption , but it's too late and you feel it. Despite the doubtless optimist song of the strings and the fierce attack of the whole orchestra: the destiny has sealed the ineluctability of the death.

Acquire this superb reading of this fundamental work of Robert Schumann.

The rest of the three Symphonies is worthable but the set shines thanks to the Fourth approach!

The interpretations are as fresh and well-judged as other reviews indicate, but I found it difficult to listen to the 4th symphony because of a persistent, high pitched electronic noise like the whining of an elderly television set all through the piece. It was either turn the treble way down or get a headache.

Perhaps in 20 years' time when my high frequency hearing has disappeared I will be able to enjoy such a thing. It seems that the old guard at Mercury aren't all that sharp-eared, since this hideous noise would have been fairly easy to filter out.

The 1st and 3rd symphonies are sonically pretty good, but as one other reviewer said, the sound on the 2nd Symphony isn't quite up to their standard, lacking a certain amount of presence and being a bit shaky on the high frequencies (oboes and trumpets are "flaky" in their upper registers).

Interestingly, the woodwind and trumpet sound on these 50's recordings isn't that far off the "period instrument" type of sound: the oboes in particular are bright, incisive and somewhat thin-toned. Clarity is the watchword for most of the orchestral textures. However the timpani and double basses are resolutely post-romantic, being rather overpowering, especially at the climactic ends of some movements - they boom out in an energetic, but unfocused way, communicating through seismic vibrations...