CLASSICAL

Recent releases reviewed

BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY NO 7
Orchestre des Champs-Elysées/Philippe Herreweghe/Harmonia Mundi HMC 901857
***

This is a disc that anyone interested in Bruckner will want to hear, though you can be sure not everyone will like it. Philippe Herreweghe has chosen to perform Bruckner's Seventh Symphony with period instruments, and with a body of strings significantly below the number that most modern conductors would favour. The sound is neither as lush as normal, nor as splendid in climaxes, though anyone who takes pleasure in contemplating the minutiae of balancing the various instrumental choirs within an orchestra will have a field day. Herreweghe's musical approach is quite austere, even ascetic, an influence, perhaps, of the instruments used. Or perhaps it's the other way around.
www.harmoniamundi.com
Michael Dervan

JOHN ADAMS: SHAKER LOOPS; WOUND DRESSER; SHORT RIDE IN A FAST MACHINE; BUSONI/ADAMS: BERCEUSE ÉLÉGIAQUE
Nathan Gunn (baritone), Bournemouth SO/Marin Alsop Naxos 8.559031
****
Shaker Loops, written for string septet in 1978 and arranged for string orchestra in 1983, is the earliest of John Adams's works to have gained wide currency. The title stems from the piece's building blocks, tremolos and trills that loop back on themselves, with an added reference to the Shaker sect (Adams had his curiosity whetted by the remains of a Shaker colony as a boy). Marin Alsop secures a vital performance from her Bournemouth players, and finds the necessary burst of energy for the Short Ride every bit as easily. The other pieces are slow, Adams's arrangement of Busoni's Berceuse élégiaque (though Busoni is nowhere mentioned in the documentation), and the almost timeless, sombre swirl of the Whitman setting, The Wound Dresser (for which the text is supplied, but with nine lines missing). www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan

STRAUSS FAMILY WALTZES, POLKAS, OVERTURE
Wiener Johann Strauss-Orchester/Willy Boskovsky/EMI Classics 586 0192 (6 CDs) ****

The waltz would never have been the same without the music of the Strauss family. And the music of the Strauss family would never have been quite the same without the performances and recordings of Willi Boskovsky (1909-1991). Boskovsky played in the Vienna Philharmonic from 1932 (as one of its leaders from 1939), and conducted the New Year's Day Concert from 1954 to 1979. EMI's new super-budget six-disc collection features recordings made with the Vienna Johann Strauss Orchestra between 1971 and 1985, plus a handful recorded with the Vienna Symphony and the Munich Radio Orchestra. There have been few men who have conducted the music of the Strauss family - both Johanns, father and son, Josef and Eduard - with such discernment. Boskovsky's lighter-than-air touch is full of wit and wiles, and he frequently manages to make the music seem like a jewel in the hand that can be transformed, by the minutest of movements, to reveal unexpected facets. www.emiclassics.com
Michael Dervan

BRAHMS: SYMPHONIES 1-4
New York Philharmonic/Bruno Walter/Sony Classical 517187 2 (2 CDs)
****

Bruno Walter's best-known recordings of the Brahms symphonies were taped in stereo in 1959 and 1960 with a hand-picked Hollywood band, billed for recording purposes as the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. These earlier mono recordings, made with the New York Philharmonic in 1951 and 1953, show the conductor's familiar warmth in this repertoire, but are that bit more tautly presented - in all but one of the 16 movements, the New York timings are shorter. To be sure, there are other conductors who generate more excitement in Brahms's symphonies, but few who manage to unfold the music in such a natural-sounding way - and fewer again who have encouraged such a cultured sound from the New York Phil.
www.sonyclassical.co.uk
Michael Dervan