Brahms Symphony No. 2; Tragic Overture; Haydn Variations National Symphony Orchestra/Rimma Sushanskaya Quartz QTZ2146 77:25 mins
Founded in the 1940s as a versatile professional freelance outfit , the National Symphony Orchestra has recently signed the Russian, David Oistrakh-trained violinist Rimma Sushanskaya as its principal associate conductor. This all-Brahms disc was recorded in Henry Wood Hall under socially distanced conditions as recently as last May. For those seeking this particular sequence of works, it provides decent readings in decent sound; but only intermittently – in a burnished horn solo here, or a swell of passion there – anything more special.
The Second Symphony’s opening movement, for instance, tends to plod in a steady 3/4 time, never really generating the slow, one-in-a-bar pendulum swing essential to carrying Brahms’s vast paragraphs forward – one is relieved that the exposition repeat is not taken. On the other hand, the strange, uneasy slow movement is delivered with a genuinely searching expressivity, and Sushanskaya resists the usual tendency to rush the jubilant finale.
The two shorter works are both acceptably delivered but, as with the Symphony, the discography is vast and formidable; and over and again one is reminded of previous recordings where detail is more crisply articulated, more subtly nuanced, or simply more sonorously beautiful. And yet achieving perfect ensemble under socially distanced conditions is no easy task; maybe the Henry Wood acoustic is more favourable to smaller groupings than full orchestras; and the salient matter surely remains the variety and richness of the works themselves.
Bayan Northcott
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