Carl NIELSEN (1865-1931)
Symphony
No. 5, Op. 50, (1920-1922) [36:57]
Symphony
No. 6, ‘Sinfonia semplice’ (1924-25) [34:28]
New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert
rec. live, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York, 1-3 October 2014
DACAPO SACD 6.220625 [71:25]
This is the third volume in Alan Gilbert’s Nielsen cycle, recorded
live in New York. With it he completes his survey of the symphonies though
a fourth disc containing Nielsen’s three concertos is due for release
later in 2015. The first volume in the series, which covered the Second
and Third Symphonies received an enthusiastic download review
from Dan Morgan. I
reviewed the second volume, containing the First and Fourth symphonies
last year.
It’s
just been announced that Alan Gilbert is to step down as Music Director
of the NYPO in 2017. By then he will have completed eight seasons in the
post, not an especially long tenure. However, he feels it’s best to
leave and allow a successor to be installed before the orchestra has to
vacate Avery Fisher Hall for a couple of years during an extensive hall
refurbishment, currently planned to begin in 2019.
This new account of the mighty Fifth Symphony, surely the peak of Nielsen’s
symphonic output, strikes me as being something of a mixed result. The first
of its two movements starts quite promisingly with a suitable level of tension.
Nielsen ups the ante significantly at around 4:28 in this performance when
timpani and lower strings start to hammer out a two-note ostinato; here
the music becomes much more threatening. I think the trouble with this present
performance is that the recording is rather close and up-front – a
characteristic of the series to date – and so the entire percussion
section, including the already-ominous side-drum, is too prominent for my
taste. The percussionists should makes their collective presence felt but
on this occasion we’re made too aware of them. There’s a fantastical,
wild clarinet descant during this episode and the New York clarinettist
delivers this in a suitably manic yet controlled fashion. There follows
a long Adagio section — helpfully tracked separately by Dacapo.
This is introduced by a four-note oboe motif. Gilbert is disappointingly
quick at this point; the oboe solo just sounds slick. Osmo Vänskä, on his
2000 BIS recording (review),
ensures his oboist has enough space to phrase the motif and invest it with
meaning.
The adagio itself is nobly sung by the NYPO strings, joined later
by the horns; hereabouts the playing has distinction. Midway through this
section (track 2, 5:05) the side-drum assumes a crucial role, the drummer
being instructed to play as if to disrupt the music. It’s a disturbing
and highly original passage. In my experience no player has ever matched
the invention and daring of Alfred Dukes, who played on Jascha Horenstein’s
1969 recording with the New Philharmonia for Unicorn-Kanchana. Dukes simply
throws his whole kitbag of tricks into the mix, rim-shots and all and the
result is unforgettable. The Horenstein account may not be perfect but it
demands a place in every Nielsen collection if only for this passage. I’d
despaired of ever hearing a player match Dukes – live or on disc –
until I heard Heather Corbett on the Vänskä recording. She may not quite
equal Dukes but, my goodness, she runs him close. The New York drummer,
who is uncredited but I suspect is the principal percussionist, Christopher
S. Lamb, is pretty imaginative and disruptive of the music, though not quite
in the league of those other two players. The snag is that he’s too
prominent. That may sound an odd thing to say when Nielsen has sought to
have his player seek to disrupt the music but the point is that the drummer
doesn’t succeed. The tremendous displays by Dukes and Corbett,
though incredibly distracting as they should be, remain integrated within
the orchestral sound, albeit prominently, and we still hear plenty of Nielsen’s
brass and woodwind writing. In this New York performance the drum is too
dominant so that when the rest of the orchestra prevails (6:30) their triumph
rather comes from nowhere and the impact of the moment is somewhat diminished.
As I noted when reviewing the previous instalment in this Gilbert series,
the BIS recordings of Osmo Vänskä’s performances present the orchestra
at a greater remove from the microphones and one has the impression of a
concert hall ambience, albeit that of an empty hall. Despite the distancing
relative to Dacapo one can still hear plenty of detail in the Vänskä performance
and there’s a better sense of perspective. I find it a more pleasing
listening experience. I also think Vänskä often has an interpretative edge;
for example, in the bars immediately before the adagio he conveys
hushed suspense in a way that Gilbert doesn’t achieve.
The second of the two movements is divided into four tracks on this recording;
that’s useful. The opening section of the movement goes well in this
New York traversal. The performance is lively and the NYPO’s playing
is energetic. Mind you, Vänskä also surges dynamically; indeed, I’m
inclined to think he has an edge here. When the Presto string fugue
is reached (track 4) Gilbert’s performance is decent but somehow I
think it seems just a bit deliberate; that’s more to do with the articulation
of the music than the actual speed. As the rest of the orchestra gradually
joins the fray that impression is reinforced, especially when the heavy
brass enter sounding, well, heavy. Vänskä’s reading, by contrast,
is lighter on its feet, even when the full brass section becomes involved.
I suspect that the respective recorded sounds may have something to do with
that, but it’s not just a matter of sonics; it’s also about
the way the two conductors get their orchestras to articulate the music.
The subsequent Andante poco tranquillo episode is dominated by
the strings. The New Yorkers play with great beauty for Gilbert but the
music seems to lack a bit of purpose; there’s something of a sense
of drift despite the surface beauty. When I turned to Vänskä I found that
he inflects the music more, not least through the use of accents; in his
hands you feel that the music is going somewhere. In the concluding pages
Nielsen reprises material from the beginning of the music and this ending
comes off well with both conductors.
Nielsen gave his Sixth Symphony the title Sinfonia semplice but
I find it anything but ‘simple’. It’s a decidedly strange
and elusive work. The orchestral forces are not significantly smaller than
those stipulated for the Fifth but Nielsen uses the orchestra with greater
restraint and the textures are usually transparent and sometimes spare.
Perhaps it is for this reason that the close Dacapo recording didn’t
seem at a disadvantage compared to the BIS sound for Vänskä’s fine
performance, which was set down in 1999 at the same venue as the Fifth.
Indeed, while I really like the BIS sound – and Vänskä’s reading
- the fact that Dacapo presents the Gilbert performance in rather more primary
colours is actually an advantage at times.
There’s delicacy and definition in the way Gilbert gets the NYPO to
play in the first movement. He achieves good transparency and this is a
very likeable performance that’s not short of character. The second
movement is entitled ‘Humoresque’ and marked Allegretto.
It’s a very quirky creation and here we’re right in the territory
of Nielsen’s Wind Quintet (1922). The woodwind playing here is very
well pointed and there are some truly bizarre brass glissandi – I
hasten to add that they are deliberately and rightly bizarre. The New York
strings come into their own in the third movement, the ‘Proposta seria’
and make a fine job of it. The finale takes the form of an amazingly inventive
and often very unusual theme and variations. Not the least
unusual passage in it comes when a series of brass irruptions intervenes
in what has been a rather charming waltz variant. It’s in this movement
and the second that the Dacapo sound-picture is a positive asset because
Nielsen’s extraordinary orchestration registers very well. Gilbert
and the NYPO do this movement very convincingly and, in fact, I judge their
performance of the symphony as a whole to be pretty successful.
In summary, then, I don’t feel that Alan Gilbert has the better of
the exchanges with Osmo Vänskä when it comes to the Fifth but he seems to
have the measure of the Sixth.
John
Quinn
Previous reviews:
Dan Morgan ~~
Jack Lawson (Recording of the Month)
Support
us financially by purchasing this from |
|
 |
 |
 |
|