Customer Reviews

Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 1-4; Rosamunde ballet music / Weber: Der Freischutz Overture

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EMI's new "Gemini" series is a breath of fresh air amidst all the smoke being put forth recently by the major classical labels. While Sony is deleting most of their classical budget discs, BMG is raising theirs to mid-price and UNI is convinced that 3CDs are always better than one, EMI decides to start a two-fer line that sells for significantly less than the competition, not to mention their own "Double Forte" series. It might not be as cheap as the old "Seraphim" series, but they could certainly be charging more for quality recordings such as these.

Herbert von Karajan's Schubert Symphony Cycle, made between 1975-78 for EMI with the Berlin Philharmonic, has been available previously on CD in the "Karajan Edition." However, those discs, released as four single titles with two Symphonies each, were twice the price of these new reissues. These performances of Symphonies 1-4 plus some Rosamunde excerpts are certainly solid, but Karajan was never celebrated as a conductor of Schubert. One wonders if that is why DG had a young Lorin Maazel record the Schubert Symphonies with the Berliners instead of Herbie at the dawn of the stereo age, and that ultimately EMI had him record this Cycle because it was something he hadn't yet done for DG. In any event, I would certainly recommend the Bohm boxed set on DG or the Kertesz on London/Decca (see my review of the latter) ahead of these performances. But considering how cheap these two double discs are, maybe picking up an extra Schubert Cycle is worth it after all.

By the mid-Seventies Karajan had achieved a degree of orchestral perfection with the Berlin Phil. that remains legendary. It's hard to back down from the super-gleaming, streamlined ensemble he preferred to the simpler mode of Schubert. The orchestral sound has been considerably tamed, however, and the wind soloists play with conisderably refinement. Nor is Karajan bored by the simplicty of the teenge composer's structure; these readings show some excitment and charm -- sample the whirlwind string playing in the finale of the Fourth, for example.

But the absence o f faults isn't the same as the presence of virtues. To my ears, Karajan hasn't come close to the heart of Schubert's tender, haunting, and ultimately transcendent style. He's not alone; Carlos Kleiber delivers a mercilessly knife-edged Thrid on DG, a real pity given that he commercially recorded only five symphonies. At the other extreme, I find Colin Davis's Schubert cycle on Philips too often tepid and undernourished. The secret is to find as much Beethoven as possible in these early works while not losing Schubert's lyrical charm. Harnoncourt manages to do that in his cycle, and I trust Mr. Richman when he points the way to Kertesz also, though I haven't heard those accounts.

In any event, Karajan's Schubert feels all wrong to me, as much as I admire him on almost every other front.

I really liked this recording of Schubert's early symphonies, it is nice to have them in this two disk set. I found the analog to digital transfer to be done well and the audio engineering was good. Beautiful playing as usual by the Berlin Philharmonic.

The tendency with these earlier symphonies, several written I think when Schubert was in his teens, is to make them sweet and beguiling. Beecham is the ultimate source for this approach, it has its rewards, and most think its never been bettered.

Karajan seems to have a different slant. He assumes that young Schubert wanted to get out of his knee breeches and wear long pants ASAP. In a way that makes sense; I know of no young creative person who starts out determined to reflect their own youth and inexperience, who wants to sound cute. Therefore the performances here are weightier, looking decidedly forward to the "Unfinished" and the "Great." The result is perhaps more, in an ironic sense given the conductor, historically accurate--they now sound like (over)ambitious and often melodramatic symphonies written by a teen genius, not charming confections tossed off by a mature Schubert who couldn't have existed at the time of their writing. They're now in the same league as the Bizet Symphony and that's not such a bad place to be.

There are losses and gains. The performances by the Berlin are excellent and so's the sound quality. At times there's some genuine drama but be warned there isn't as much hoochy-coo as we expect from recordings of this music. Schubert had hoochy-coo down pat probably by the age of six--I'm sure for him it was just writing good melodies, an innate gift he couldn't get around if he tried--but it took him years to develop his very unique and convincing drama. Early on when he tries to get serious (and that's more often than we care to admit as these recordings show) he sounds like a second rate French composer of dramatic overtures. For the price I strongly recommend these as alternates to the frothier Schubert recordings we've been served up lately. If nothing else (and don't get me wrong, I do like them) they make for terrific background music.

[Years later: I have this horrible feeling that the one person who read this and "didn't find it helpful" was offended by my use of the expression "hootchy-coo" in reference to the deity, Schubert. I am so sorry. Otherwise, I can't imagine what was unhelpful about it, in fact I think my points about young Schubert's self-image are original and fairly well-thought-out. This whole Amazon review thing is sometimes bewildering but it sometimes makes me understand why George W. Bush keeps winning elections in this country]