Symphonies 2 & 3

Album review

All of us know the "First Favorite Syndrome" where a performance gets imprinted on a particular listener -- it becomes the way the music is supposed to go. For this listener, William Steinberg's stunning Capital recording of this symphony, way back in the late 1950s, had this effect. Now, Alun Francis and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra have taped an account of it that shoves the Steinberg version aside. Steinberg's is so good that it took two hearings to accomplish this, but this writer finds that the symphony has acquired an urgency and drama that it did not have in the earlier LP. (Moreover, EMI's re-release on CD needs remastering to cure a seriously over-emphasized top register.) Steinberg did a very nice job of presenting a drama in each of the three movements. In the first movement, for instance, he rose through a statement of power in the grotesque march of the central part to a reposeful conclusion. Francis imbues tension to the opening pages, and does not seek repose at the end of the movement, but leaves the story unfinished, pending the following two movements. In the second movement he finds an eerie, fearfulness in the quiet slow part and adds a sardonic element to the grotesque harmonization of the light but dissonant scherzo portion. To make the package even more effective, he seems to use the exotic percussion instruments specified as options in the score, some of them custom-designed, and balances them superbly with the standard instruments to create a web of unique sounds. Credit for this also goes to the recording team of Klaus Bischke and Henry Thaon, and to the famously superb acoustics of Berlin's Jesus Christus-Kirche. You should hear this recording of one of the best tonal symphonies of the post-War era.
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