Sir Colin Davis’s progress
from a firebrand challenger of establishment
orthodoxy to the white-haired sage of
today has been mapped out by a number
of clearly-defined stages, each neatly
calculated so as to be long enough to
make its mark yet not too long to outstay
its welcome. Sadler’s Wells, the BBC
Symphony Orchestra, Covent Garden, the
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and
the London Symphony Orchestra, together
with important guest or honorary positions
in Boston, Dresden and New York (the
latter undocumented on CD as yet); each
has seen its particular triumphs with
the odd disappointment thrown in. On
the conducting stage of the late 20th
Century he may be compared to Bernstein
or Horenstein, not because his interpretations
in any ways resemble theirs (which are
totally different from one another anyway)
but because he is a loner, not a follower
of anyone in particular, nor a spawner
of imitations in his turn, and because
his pursuit of the truth of the composers
he loves sometimes comes up against
the sheer force of his own personality.
This has not prevented him from interpreting
a wide range of composers with signal
success, yet never in almost fifty years
before the public eye has it been suggested
that Brahms is one of the composers
into whom he possesses particular insights.
The present symphonic cycle – so far
without successor and likely to remain
so since the LSO’s own label has preferred
to play safe with Haitink’s well-tried
interpretations – was received pretty
tepidly in the early 1990s and quietly
disappeared.
Contrary to my own
expectations and to received wisdom,
I have to say I found it (I’ll come
to the concertos later) a superbly consistent
cycle without a weak moment and more
satisfactory, to my ears, than this
conductor’s interpretations of some
of the music for which he is said to
show a special empathy.
The opening of no.1
should be enough to reassure anyone.
The tempo is sufficiently forward-moving
to avoid any sense of plod and the sound
itself is a marvel, rich and transparent
at the same time. The Davis sound in
Brahms is based firstly on a forward
wind-balance, with each instrument encouraged
to exploit its special tonal characteristics
(Berlioz training) and then set them
within a general blend which is rich
but not just generically homogenous.
Then the string articulation is very
clear with a sonorous but sharply etched
bass-line (Mozart training) which means
that Brahms’s frequent moments of canonic
and pseudo canonic imitation between
upper and lower strings are always perfectly
clear. Unexpected relief is frequently
given to inner lines, throwing familiar
passages into new focus without actually
obscuring the contours we know so well.
It is as though Davis has taken the
symphonies to pieces and reassembled
them without reference to other versions;
in a general way his reconstructions
do not run counter to what we normally
hear, but in countless small details
we are aware of an inquiring mind at
work. There are also, I suppose I should
point out, occasional bursts of brass
to remind us that the conductor has
an impetuous temperament to curb.
The Allegro of no.1
is as tautly dramatic and unhurried
as one might expect of a conductor who
made an early success with Don Giovanni.
In the slow movement he prefers, as
is the custom today, a slower tempo
than those of Klemperer or Boult (Davis:
9’ 55", Klemperer: 9’ 25",
Boult: 8’ 24") yet his sense of
ongoing rhythm avoids heaviness. Much
the same may be said of the gravely
carolled intermezzo (Davis: 5’ 09",
Klemperer: 4’ 42", Boult: 4’ 48").
If in these movements the timings merely
confirmed the impressions I got from
listening, in the finale Davis, for
all his grand majesty, is also bitingly
dramatic and I frankly didn’t expect
to find his timing so much longer than
the other two (Davis: 17:28, Klemperer:
16:00, Boult 16:01). In the first movement,
by the way, Klemperer klempers (to use
Paul Shoemaker’s delightful term) unmercifully
(Davis: 13:01, Klemperer: 14:06; Boult’s
15:36 finds space for the repeat omitted
by the others). All in all, this powerful,
vital and cogent interpretation is as
good as I have heard.
If no.1 is perhaps
the glory of the cycle, in part this
is because Brahms himself became less
dense and more transparent, with the
result that Davis’s particular insights
add less to what we already knew. Still,
it is all very fine, continuing the
pattern of bitingly dramatic first movements
(no.3, given with the repeat, is a notably
passionate affair), long-drawn but never
mushy slow movements, gravely paced
intermezzos (that of no.2 slips in and
out of its various tempi with much mastery)
plus a tensely vital version of the
real scherzo in no.4, and broad finales.
This latter means that no.2 does not
generate the same overall cumulative
sweep you find in Boult, but this was
very much the triumph of Boult’s Indian
summer cycle (available on 3 CDs on
a label which can be bought only in
HMV shops); in no.1 he failed to carry
the orchestra with him and is (as transferred)
muzzily recorded. Boult’s 3 and 4 have
much to commend them though the latter
does not efface my memories of a live
performance I heard him give. Klemperer’s
particular qualities are to be heard
in no.3 which flows with an unforced
inevitability from start to finish,
but again no.1 is a liability and he
does some odd things with the other
two here and there. It would be nice
to think that in the fullness of years
Davis will return to Brahms but even
as it is, to have done a better cycle
overall than Klemperer is no mean achievement.
Obviously, if you want
a different kind of performance, whether
fast and passionate or freely romantic,
there is a wide range of alternatives;
there are some notable historical cycles
(Weingartner, Toscanini …) and it is
curious that a number of conductors
produced fine versions of one or two
of the symphonies (Munch, Reiner, Scherchen
…) but were not asked to record the
others.
Davis’s Academic Festival
hangs fire here and there but this hardly
affects the overall package. His Haydn
Variations are very well
characterised, confirming his liking
for a broad finale in Brahms, while
in the Tragic Overture he joins Ančerl
in showing that a 15-minute traversal
heightens the stark drama – by comparison
Klemperer (12:32), Boult (13:52) and
Kempe (12:58) sound one-sided
and brusque.
But what of the concertos
(and what, by the way, is the point
of issuing all four symphonies but only
three out of the four concertos)?
In some ways Gerhard
Oppitz might seem the ideal partner
for the enterprise since he, too, favours
broad, majestic tempi, an absence of
self-conscious point-making and a rich,
rounded sonority. It is this latter
which brings my first reservation, though,
since however basically well-suited
to the music this sonority is, he makes
no attempt to vary it throughout the
length of the two concertos. The borderline
between what is impressively single-minded
and what is oppressively monochrome
is a fine one and by the end I felt
that Oppitz had veered to far in the
latter direction. All the same, I enjoyed
no.1 considerably, not least for the
well-chosen tempo for the first movement
which allows spaciousness without ever
steering into the doldrums (Davis’s
contribution is very positive in this
sense). The first movement of no.2 on
the other hand is too close to an Andante
for me and it needs all Davis’s blazing
support to keep it going. But my biggest
qualm regards the last movement where
the doggedly even stressing takes the
joy out of the music. Still, if you
accept an approach which puts broad
majesty before everything else, these
performances are fine up to a point,
even masterly.
Kyoko Takezawa is a
quite different type of artist, with
a dangerous tendency to drift into gentle
rhapsody at the expense of structure
– the first movement cadenza shows how
disruptive she can be when nobody is
able to do anything about it. For the
rest, Davis very tactfully keeps her
on course and the result, if not the
finest version in the catalogue, is
warm-hearted and lyrical, with broad
but not sluggish tempi.
So how about these
5 CDs as a way of getting your basic
Brahms? Well, if the 3CDs containing
the symphonies and the other three orchestral
works had come out on their own I should
be asking the Editor to name it a Record
of the Month, for this is an extremely
satisfying and consistent cycle, superior
as a whole to the Klemperer set I reviewed
not long ago. The concertos do not add
as much as they might and they are not
even complete. One thing you could do
would be to get the splendid Heifetz/Piatigorsky/Wallenstein
Double Concerto as a supplement, and
as I pointed out in my review, you will
be getting a performance of the Violin
Concerto by Heifetz and Reiner which
is nothing if not a contrast to the
present one, brisk and passionately
forward-moving to a fault. Better still,
though, to get a performance like the
incomparable Szeryng/Monteux which manages
to inhabit the best of both worlds.
But then you would need to get someone
like Gilels in the piano concertos,
and I wonder if you would ever listen
to Oppitz again if you did that? So
now it’s over to you.
Christopher Howell
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Sir Colin
Davis