This recording of Schwarz’s
version of the kinetically charged Schuman Third Symphony is
projected with tremendous power. I rate this as amongst the
most powerful works of the mid-20th century. Its war-time
origins are consonant with both its primal violence and its
soulfulness. While it has a steely and irresistibly euphoric
joy in power it does not lack for elegiac substance. We can
hear this in the throbbing Tallis-like singing of
the strings in the Chorale. While it wants that last
ounce of quasi-hysteria to be heard in Bernstein’s still
glorious 1960s version it is accorded a natural sounding
yet potent recording. Bernstein’s better recorded 1980s
Third is available on a DG
set (see review).
His unmissable 1960-session Third is on a very desirable
Sony CD (see review)
if you can find a copy. However Schwarz’s
is no mere stop-gap as the squat brass, jazzy and ruthless
syncopation,
gun-shot side drum ‘rounds’ and thrumming strings of the
final five minutes of the Toccata instantly proclaim. Just
superb! The rest is just as good.
The Symphony for
Strings is in an idiom similar to that of the
Third and has that same blood-rush. The string choirs
are presented here with sonorous power from top to bass.
One gains the sense of a nation’s soul at song and of
boundless and bounding energy. Alongside this there is
always an exciting and yielding humanity that often eludes
composers such as Markevitch and Mossolov.
Schuman wrote Judith for
a Martha Graham commission. The ballet was performed by Graham
with the Louisville Orchestra conducted by Robert Whitney
on 4 January 1950. They recorded it
in 1972 (see review). What we now hear on this recording
amounts to vintage Schuman in the manner of the Third Symphony
but
discursive
and without the unrelenting grip the earlier work exerts.
The useful notes are by
Steven Lowe.
This is now the third
Naxos disc of Schuman symphonies: (4
& 9 - see
review;
7
& 10 - see review). That
leaves only 6 and 8 to come; the first two symphonies were
withdrawn but who knows these
days …
Inexplicably the Bernstein-McInnes Concerto
on Old English Rounds for viola, chorus and orchestra
on a Columbia LP (M 35101) never made it to CD. I hope
that it has not fallen into the same seemingly irreversible
vinyl oblivion as Tilson Thomas’s complete recording of
the Ruggles orchestral music; that was also on CBS-Sony.
Wonderfully intense and
luminous playing from the Seattle Orchestra. These are fine
readings and the disc is made by the first modern recording
of the Third Symphony in quite some time. Who knows, perhaps
one of these days we will hear it live.
Rob Barnett
Editor's Note: The
Symphony 5 and Judith on this
disc are remastered versions of the
recordings originally released on Delos
DE3115 in the early 1990s.
William
Schuman website
Naxos American Classics page
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Seattle Symphony Orchestra/Gerard
Schwarz