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Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016 in conveying the anguish of what that means in the context of the symphony as a whole. The returning motto theme – one of Elgar’s noblest processionals – is heavily indecisive in the closing minutes of the movement. Doubt and a sense of unfinished business prevail. In Barenboim’s fiercely dynamic approach to the scherzo – full of martial gung‑ho – we know why. It is as if the music is scenting impending strife (premonitions of the Great War) and there is no small irony here in its Teutonic brashness. Again, the trio feels like a conscious distraction from the fearful and the gradual windingdown into the great slow movement is marvellously achieved. If the symphony, as Elgar himself suggested, is essentially a formal expression of human experience with all its trials and tribulations but ultimately a need to ‘come home’ with hope, then the First Symphony’s  slow movement is where everything is put into perspective and all of life’s disappointments and regrets are tempered with a deeper sense of resignation. Complex character that Elgar was, that found its way into the writing and Barenboim’s generously sounded account of this wonderful movement makes such capital of the depth achieved in the subdivisions of the string-writing. I know that the peculiarly English accent is very much written into this music but his Staatskapelle Berlin seem to feel it intuitively, not least with regard to its deep and abiding sense of consolation. That is universal, of course, and reminds me of a very well-known conductor who observed that if Elgar had been born in Austria he’d have been called Mahler. The quiet hush of resignation at the close of the movement (achieved at a price, we are made to believe) is breathtaking without feeling affected – as in superhushed for theatrical effect – still retaining its full tone, and the pale, wistful clarinet peeping through in the final bar again reminds us how subtle Elgar’s colorations are. And so the finale is upon us, with the motto theme darkly disguised. Barenboim’s drive through the movement’s  development feels like a kind of celebration of what the symphonic allegro can generate in terms of energy, and it is only when it finally does abate into a kind of repose that you instinctively know that something wondrous this way comes. The transformation of that darkly ominous march into something radiant and transcendental is quite simply one of the great moments in English (or any) music, and Barenboim and his orchestra ease us so gently into this revelation that the climax when it comes sings all the more gloriously. The ‘triumphant’ return of the motto is quite thrilling and again quite unlike anything else in Elgar: those euphoric sforzandos really make the heart leap in what has to be one of the most original depictions of hard-won jubilance in music. The dense swelling of the orchestration in these pages sounds marvellous here with again exemplary balances. So there isn’t a tempo, a turn of phrase or a rubato anywhere that I would take issue with. More importantly, the whole feels thoroughly integrated and gloriously spontaneous. This is up there, you’ll have gathered, with the very finest that the gramophone has yet given us of this great – and finally, I hope, universally celebrated – symphony. Edward Seckerson Schubert Symphony No 9, D944 Orchestra Mozart / Claudio Abbado DG F 479 4652GH; F 6 479 5087GH2 (63’ • DDD) Recorded live at the Auditorium Manzoni, Bologna, September 19-23, 2011, and the Bolzano Auditorium, September 24-25, 2011 There was a time when Schubert’s Great C major Symphony seemed an interpretatively elusive work, which explains why such store was set by memorable recorded accounts by Furtwängler, Krips, Boult and Böhm. And by Toscanini, when his 1941 Philadelphia performance resurfaced in the late 1950s. Since there are things in the symphony which can be traced directly back to Schubert’s Overture ‘In the Italian Style’, D590, an Italianate take on the work has never been without interest. Abbado’s first recording, made with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Vienna in 1987, stood within that Italianate tradition, and very fine it is, though Abbado’s endorsement of some over-zealous research into the autograph manuscript led to a couple of curious interventions. I rather enjoyed the eupeptic belch, worthy of Sir Toby himself, which Schumann deleted from the Scherzo when he originally unearthed the symphony. But the altered version of the motif which brings major-key pathos to the minor-key march at bar 25 of the slow movement was an intervention too far. Neither occurs in this new recording, which derives from a series of performances Abbado gave with his Orchestra Mozart in different halls in Bolzano and Bologna in September 2011. Since the results, technically speaking, are perfectly plausible, it’s clear that this daring raid on Abbado’s posthumous archive is well within the competence of DG’s editors and engineers. No one is likely to mistake the Orchestra Mozart for a slimmed-down Berlin Philharmonic, as was the case with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, but the Orchestra Mozart’s homelier, less virtuoso approach is apt to Abbado’s later way with the music. It’s a reading that is mellower, though with no loss of textural transparency, and more measured, though with no loss of cogency and drive. As before, Abbado takes all the repeats. If the results are not as purely electrifying in the quicker movements as in the 1987 version, in the slow movement the newer performance has the edge. Not only is the text to be preferred but the performance itself is deeper and more serene. ‘Like a bell haunted by a human soul’ is how Tovey describes the horn’s ushering in the return of the minor key after the movement’s consolatory second subject. And so it is here. This, then, is a version which complements rather than yields to or replaces Abbado’s earlier recording. Admirers of the conductor – and the symphony – will want both. Richard Osborne Selected comparison: COE, Abbado (2/89) (DG) 423 656-2GH Shostakovich ‘Under Stalin’s Shadow’ Symphony No 10, Op 93. Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District – Act 2, Interlude (Passacaglia) Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons DG F 479 5059GH (65’ • DDD) Recorded live at Symphony Hall, Boston, April 2015 Andris Nelsons’s first (live) recording as Music Director of the Boston Symphony is quite something. It carries the title ‘Under Stalin’s Shadow’ though, of course, the Tenth Symphony – premiered just months after Stalin’s death in 1953 – was the point at which Shostakovich emerged from that 36 GRAMOPHONE AWARDS 2016 gramophone.co.uk
page 37
Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016 C hristodoulou C hris : p h o t o g r a p h y shadow defiantly brandishing his own musical monogram – DSCH – like a medal of honour. But while the Tenth is in itself a before-and-after-Stalin chronicle, Nelsons has added a preface in the shape of the stupendous Passacaglia from the composer’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District – the piece which first found disfavour with the dictator and his regime. So shock-and-awe arrives with a vengeance in the screaming organ-like chords which portend Katerina Izmailova’s destiny – the State bearing down on this liberated woman for the crimes to which she has been driven. It is the musical embodiment of oppression, this extraordinary interlude, and the irony is that Stalin should not recognise it as such but rather find offence in its crushing dissonance. And, my goodness, Nelsons lays down the monster climax with almost obscene relish, howls of derision from the woodwind choir and the Boston trumpets recalling a thrilling stridency from days of yore when the principal from the Münch and Leinsdorf eras would lend a steely, blade-like gleam to the tutti sound. It’s a really affecting segue then from the impenetrable darkness of its closing bars into the long string bass-led introduction of the Tenth Symphony. Nelsons’s performance is mighty, marked by a wonderful nose for atmosphere and a way of making space for the succession of desolate wind solos – first clarinet, later bassoons and piccolos. The inexorability of this beautifully proportioned, arch-like first movement is judged to perfection. There is that forlorn little dance for flute that morphs into a cry of such despair in the huge development climax and later emerges in clarinets striving hope against hope to keep the spirit of optimism alive. I mentioned the despairing climax of this movement, an upheaval so great and so protracted as to seem insurmountable – but what makes Nelsons so lethally impressive here is the precision with which he addresses every accent, every ferocious sforzando. He is the most rhythmic of conductors and the trumpet‑topped brass here are possessed of a unanimity that makes them absolutely implacable. I should add that every thematic motif, every cross-reference and transformation is clearly delineated. Not in any sense forensic, as in sterile, just startlingly clear. And as Nelsons negotiates the aftermath of this crisis with great intakes of breath from his cellos and basses, we come full-circle into the bleak coda, where two piccolos vainly attempt a consoling roundelay. The whirlwind scherzo ensues – and whether or not this was intended as a thumbnail sketch of Stalin tearing through the fabric of the symphony is immaterial: something destructive this way comes, and at great speed. Well, more the illusion of speed (emphatic and imperative) because again it’s the rhythmic precision, the snap of the syncopations and absolute security in the playing of them that takes the breath away. When the trombones make their invasive presence felt midway through the movement there is more than a hint of Red Army bullyboy tactics in the attitude they convey and, by contrast, Nelsons makes much of that eerie motoric passage in the strings which follows, as if quietly generating more energy for the closing bars. So much for the ‘before’. Emerging from the dust of the scherzo comes the ‘after’ – the composer reasserting his identity in the coded musical form of his own monogram, DSCH. It’s there almost before you know it, offsetting evocative horn solos (beautifully attended by the BSO principal) and reiterating itself through the folk dance at the heart of the Allegretto. What a mysterious movement this is (closer to a Mahlerian Nachtmusik than anything else in Shostakovich) and how subtly Nelsons explores its shadowy subtext. I have mentioned the beauty and personality of the wind-playing throughout this performance, and the plaintive oboe solo which first scents a new dawn at the start of the finale is especially poignant. Be in no doubt that this is one of the finest performances that I have ever heard of this great piece (it must surely bid fair for ‘best in catalogue’) and to say that it augurs well for Nelsons’s future with the Boston Symphony is an understatement and then some. This was a shrewd appointment. Symphony Hall, Boston (modelled after Vienna and Amsterdam) sounds wonderful, too, the thunderous restatement of the DSCH motif at the heart of the finale packing a huge punch and preparing us for the fireworks of the coda, where defiant timpani have almost the last word with it. Almost, but not quite. Stalin may have been dead but his pernicious legacy was very much alive. Edward Seckerson Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony (Symphony No 1) Katherine Broderick sop gramophone.co.uk Roderick Williams bar Hallé Choir; Hallé Youth Choir; Schola Cantorum; Ad Solem; Hallé Orchestra / Sir Mark Elder Hallé F CDHLL7542 (70’ • DDD • T) Recorded live at The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, March 29, 2014 and in rehearsal ‘Steer for the deep waters only’, exhorts the poet in the last movement (‘The Explorers’) of A Sea Symphony, and that’s precisely what Sir Mark Elder and his intrepid Hallé forces do here. Make no mistake, Elder presides over a majestic performance, brimful of lofty spectacle, abundant temperament and stunning accomplishment. In both outer movements especially the towering climaxes are built and resolved with unassailable mastery – and I don’t think I’ve ever been more aware just of how touchingly the slow movement’s coda foreshadows its counterpart in A London Symphony. Some might conceivably crave fractionally greater bite and thrust in the scherzo, but the gloriously ambitious finale is held together with effortless authority, those sublimely contemplative and illimitably rapt closing pages as full of questing wonder as I can ever recall. As for the soloists, baritone Roderick Williams is on customarily refulgent and intelligent form; soprano Katherine Broderick, too, sings with heaps of passion and drama, her thrilling top B towards the end of the first movement riding the massive swell in a way that even recalls Dame Isobel Baillie on Boult’s classic (and still unassailable) 1953 Decca recording. The superbly honed choral and orchestral contribution surely testifies to many hours of painstaking preparation, and Steve Portnoi’s Bridgewater Hall production (taken from a combination of rehearsals and a concert in March 2014) accommodates the intrepidly wide range of dynamic with ease. Borne as it is on virtually as irresistible a symphonic current as the mono Boult, Handley (EMI, 2/89) and Haitink (1/90), Elder’s is the most satisfying Sea Symphony I’ve encountered in many a moon, and no one collecting his RVW symphony cycle with the Hallé need have any qualms acquiring it. Andrew Achenbach Selected comparison: LPO, Boult (DECC) 473 241-2DC5 GRAMOPHONE AWards 2016 37

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Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016

in conveying the anguish of what that means in the context of the symphony as a whole. The returning motto theme – one of Elgar’s noblest processionals – is heavily indecisive in the closing minutes of the movement. Doubt and a sense of unfinished business prevail.

In Barenboim’s fiercely dynamic approach to the scherzo – full of martial gung‑ho – we know why. It is as if the music is scenting impending strife (premonitions of the Great War) and there is no small irony here in its Teutonic brashness. Again, the trio feels like a conscious distraction from the fearful and the gradual windingdown into the great slow movement is marvellously achieved.

If the symphony, as Elgar himself suggested, is essentially a formal expression of human experience with all its trials and tribulations but ultimately a need to ‘come home’ with hope, then the First Symphony’s  slow movement is where everything is put into perspective and all of life’s disappointments and regrets are tempered with a deeper sense of resignation. Complex character that Elgar was, that found its way into the writing and Barenboim’s generously sounded account of this wonderful movement makes such capital of the depth achieved in the subdivisions of the string-writing. I know that the peculiarly English accent is very much written into this music but his Staatskapelle Berlin seem to feel it intuitively, not least with regard to its deep and abiding sense of consolation. That is universal, of course, and reminds me of a very well-known conductor who observed that if Elgar had been born in Austria he’d have been called Mahler.

The quiet hush of resignation at the close of the movement (achieved at a price, we are made to believe) is breathtaking without feeling affected – as in superhushed for theatrical effect – still retaining its full tone, and the pale, wistful clarinet peeping through in the final bar again reminds us how subtle Elgar’s colorations are.

And so the finale is upon us, with the motto theme darkly disguised. Barenboim’s drive through the movement’s  development feels like a kind of celebration of what the symphonic allegro can generate in terms of energy, and it is only when it finally does abate into a kind of repose that you instinctively know that something wondrous this way comes. The transformation of that darkly ominous march into something radiant and transcendental is quite simply one of the great moments in English (or any) music, and Barenboim and his orchestra ease us so gently into this revelation that the climax when it comes sings all the more gloriously.

The ‘triumphant’ return of the motto is quite thrilling and again quite unlike anything else in Elgar: those euphoric sforzandos really make the heart leap in what has to be one of the most original depictions of hard-won jubilance in music. The dense swelling of the orchestration in these pages sounds marvellous here with again exemplary balances. So there isn’t a tempo, a turn of phrase or a rubato anywhere that I would take issue with. More importantly, the whole feels thoroughly integrated and gloriously spontaneous. This is up there, you’ll have gathered, with the very finest that the gramophone has yet given us of this great – and finally, I hope, universally celebrated – symphony. Edward Seckerson

Schubert Symphony No 9, D944 Orchestra Mozart / Claudio Abbado DG F 479 4652GH; F 6 479 5087GH2 (63’ • DDD) Recorded live at the Auditorium Manzoni, Bologna, September 19-23, 2011, and the Bolzano Auditorium, September 24-25, 2011

There was a time when Schubert’s Great C major Symphony seemed an interpretatively elusive work, which explains why such store was set by memorable recorded accounts by Furtwängler, Krips, Boult and Böhm. And by Toscanini, when his 1941 Philadelphia performance resurfaced in the late 1950s. Since there are things in the symphony which can be traced directly back to Schubert’s Overture ‘In the Italian Style’, D590, an Italianate take on the work has never been without interest.

Abbado’s first recording, made with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Vienna in 1987, stood within that Italianate tradition, and very fine it is, though Abbado’s endorsement of some over-zealous research into the autograph manuscript led to a couple of curious interventions. I rather enjoyed the eupeptic belch, worthy of Sir Toby himself, which Schumann deleted from the Scherzo when he originally unearthed the symphony. But the altered version of the motif which brings major-key pathos to the minor-key march at bar 25 of the slow movement was an intervention too far.

Neither occurs in this new recording, which derives from a series of performances Abbado gave with his Orchestra Mozart in different halls in Bolzano and Bologna in September 2011. Since the results, technically speaking, are perfectly plausible, it’s clear that this daring raid on Abbado’s posthumous archive is well within the competence of DG’s editors and engineers.

No one is likely to mistake the Orchestra Mozart for a slimmed-down Berlin Philharmonic, as was the case with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, but the Orchestra Mozart’s homelier, less virtuoso approach is apt to Abbado’s later way with the music. It’s a reading that is mellower, though with no loss of textural transparency, and more measured, though with no loss of cogency and drive. As before, Abbado takes all the repeats.

If the results are not as purely electrifying in the quicker movements as in the 1987 version, in the slow movement the newer performance has the edge. Not only is the text to be preferred but the performance itself is deeper and more serene. ‘Like a bell haunted by a human soul’ is how Tovey describes the horn’s ushering in the return of the minor key after the movement’s consolatory second subject. And so it is here. This, then, is a version which complements rather than yields to or replaces Abbado’s earlier recording. Admirers of the conductor – and the symphony – will want both. Richard Osborne Selected comparison: COE, Abbado (2/89) (DG) 423 656-2GH

Shostakovich ‘Under Stalin’s Shadow’ Symphony No 10, Op 93. Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District – Act 2, Interlude (Passacaglia) Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons DG F 479 5059GH (65’ • DDD) Recorded live at Symphony Hall, Boston, April 2015

Andris Nelsons’s first (live) recording as Music Director of the Boston Symphony is quite something. It carries the title ‘Under Stalin’s Shadow’ though, of course, the Tenth Symphony – premiered just months after Stalin’s death in 1953 – was the point at which Shostakovich emerged from that

36 GRAMOPHONE AWARDS 2016

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