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| Page 12 | Music Reviews - CD | June 2007 |
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DVDs - Various Naxos, 8.557430, 56:01 minutes
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By Alidė Kohlhaas
This composer, who remained content to follow the classical format as everyone else around him adopted the Romantic repertoire, did not please a new generation of composers and music critics growing up around him. Some of his contemporaries, such as lieder composer Hugo Wolf, described him as "a relic from primeval ages" and as one who will have "no part of the great stream of time." Wolf, a huge Wagner fan, ranks among the greatest of German art song writers, but he certainly misjudge Brahms greatly. Even Gustav Mahler called Brahms a "mannikin with a narrow heart." Well, today Brahms is played as often as Mahler, and the music that once was thought too difficult to play is part of the repertoire of many orchestras and soloists, who seem to have none of the difficulties experienced by earlier musicians. It is, therefore, that one approaches Brahms' Symphony No. 3, as performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and directed by Marin Alsop, with high expectations. Issued as a CD by Naxos, the work follows two other Naxos releases of Brahms' Symphony No. 1 and 2 featuring the London Philharmonic under the baton of Alsop. The conductor, one of the few great women conductors, who have overcome the male world of orchestras, is no pushover. Her interpretation of this great symphony is everything it should be. Alsop has the orchestra firmly in hand. She not only evokes the lyrical aspects of this great symphony, but its bold aspects, its yearning moments, as well as its celebratory ones, right to the final chords when Brahms recreated the opening theme of the first movement in gentle reminiscence. Alsop's interpretation is both gutsy and yet also mellow where others might have wanted to be faster and harder in their renditions of the work. That the orchestra followed her along this path is a great credit to her conducting as well as to the cohesion of the Philharmonic.
Also on this CD are Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn, & St. Antoni Choral, Op. 56a, eight in all. The variations are an excellent complement to the Symphony No. 3 and show the London Philharmonic off at its best. This is a CD that has rave value for anyone who likes Brahms. I gladly give it five stars out of five. |
The music of
Johannes Brahms affects everyone differently, but there are surely few
classical music lovers who will say they do not enjoy hearing at least one
of his four symphonies. His Symphony No. 3
(first performed in 1883) reveals to us the composer's
lyric nature. It can easily compete with any of his contemporaries'
Romanticism without sacrificing the classical structure to which he remained
loyal all his life. The Third Symphony thus carries us beyond the everyday
into an almost pastoral setting. Not that he probably had this in mind.
Brahms, after all, was a serious musician whose interest lay in the creation
of abstract sounds in a format that enhanced those sounds.