Brahms: Symphony No. 1; Tragic Overture; Academic Festival Overture [Hybrid SACD] [Hybrid SACD] [SACD]

Marin Alsop, who is surely a rising star among American conductors, has made a lot of recordings in recent years, but they are mostly of American music and slightly outside the core repertoire­--Rouse, Bernstein, Barber, Torke, Edgar Meyer and Mark O'Connor, Libby Larsen, Joan Tower, Edward Joseph Collins and with her own Concordia Orchestra, the music of stride-master James P. Johnson. Now apparently she's thought to be good enough by her main record label, Naxos, to begin recording things in the center of the classical music repertoire­--the Brahms symphonies and overtures. This CD is the first in that series. And she is given one of the world's great orchestras to record with, the London Philharmonic. The question, of course, is how will she do in these hugely over-recorded works? On the basis of this first disc I'd have to say that she will be able to hold her own with the big boys. Her effort here is abetted by absolutely exquisite playing by the LPO.

The Brahms First is the favorite of many people (not me, no doubt a personal idiosyncrasy) and thus is a tough one to start the series with (aside from that being chronologically appropriate). This is, by and large, a mainstream reading. Tempi, with one small exception, are well-judged. Balances are superb. Phrasing is sensitive, transitions, with the same exception, are smooth and natural-sounding. The LPO play like angels. How does Alsop's conception compare with other conductors' versions. Well, much to my surprise the performance this most reminds me of is my own personal favorite of all the Brahms Firsts that I know, that of Kurt Sanderling conducting the Dresden Staatskapelle, recorded in 1971. Perhaps there is less cholesterol in the string playing than in the wonderful Walter/Columbia Symphony recording, but the LPO strings are actually somewhat lusher than those in the Sanderling. There are many other wonderful performances, of course, including Haitink/Concertgebouw, Furtwängler/VPO, Karajan/BPO, and many others. But this one can stand with them. My only quibble, alluded to above, is the handling of the crucial tempo change in Movement IV at the statement of the Big Tune. The score calls for an Allegro non troppo ma con brio tempo for the initial statement of that theme, but Alsop takes an Andante con not much moto at the beginning (and it DOES sound lush and beautiful, I'll give it that) but the lead up to the animato section at mm. 94 and following, seems to rush awkwardly to get up to the tempo she wants for the animato. That aside, though, this is a lovely reading and one that easily deserves a recommendation. Add to that good performances of both the Tragic and Academic Festival Overtures, and you have a winner.

Naxos helps us out with their budget pricing. How can you lose?

TT=72:42

Scott Morrison

But back to Ms. Alsop and the London Philharmonic in this disc of Brahms. I have to say that Ms. Alsop is finding her own approach to playing Brahms, and although she infuses plenty of romantic fire and drama into the maestoso opening, overall she rather reveals Brahms the humanist to us instead of Brahms the gruff, shy, painfully reserved composer of say, works like the Alto Rhapsody. The London Philharmonic have a great, long Brahms tradition, and they are backing Ms. Alsop every step of the way so far as I can tell. So far, so good.

But the dreadful and frustrating thing to me is that the venue largely sabotages, detracting from all this insight and serious musical effort. The Watford Colosseum inserts itself on this disc as - just a horrid, circular sounding open space that gathers the music up into a cotton candy pillar of Elvis-fan pink hair, and then keeps it spinning round. The bass frequencies are accentuated, and the rest of the frequency spectrum is rendered faint by de-emphasis. The directional cues which would ordinarily place woodwinds and brass and strings in a coherent acoustic are simply almost completely garbled here by the Watford mess. A listener could actually be forgiven for thinking that this album has been multitracked, particularly in multi-channel SuperAudio resolution, with different sections of the orchestra being recorded at different times in different venues, so egregious is the damage that this awful acoustic does. Strings could have been recorded in site A, on Monday; woodwinds and soft to mezzoforte brass at site B on Tuesday; then of course when woodwinds or brass play louder, that sounds like it was recorded at site C on Wednesday; and on it goes.

Now please understand me. The artifice and imbalance of this awful venue are perfectly listenable in a generic, elevator music sort of way that manages wide frequency response.

But this performance is actually so interesting, as it seems to be trying to give us a slightly different view of Brahms that would be really nice if you could hear it as it was probably intended. The moment you listen closely to this disc, trying to grasp the overall concept, you hear the many subtle ways in which this particular venue simply lets all go loopy and blends, blends, blends - except when it comes to making the orchestra sections seem like they are playing in the same acoustic; and then goes on to distort the music consistently, highlighting the lack of locating acoustic in the first place.

If Brahms were simply a chord-based classical pop composer this deficit of locating acoustic probably would little matter. But the fact is that part of Brahms' enduring genius was his uncanny ability to write music that at first hearing sounds like chordal harmony and only later reveals its polyphonic depth and subtlety with close listening and greater familiarity. Having to suffer through all this mess in the high resolution of multi-channel Super Audio only adds insult to the embarrassment of having tried to bring off an interesting recorded performance like this in the Watford Colosseum, in the first mistaken place.

I am so upset - for Ms. Alsop, for the London Philharmonic, and even for Naxos. Surely somebody really dropped the ball on planning insofar as they settled on the Watford Colosseum as the recording studio. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it.

Still, five starts for Ms. Alsop, the London Philharmonic, and of course for Brahms.

Message to Naxos now: Fire the ninny who booked Watford, and get into a real music hall ASAP for the remaining three symphonies. Otherwise we can surely expect that continued use of the Watford Colosseum will simply continue to Cuisinart those performances, too. Why or why did the folks at Naxos trip over their own feet like this? They have made enough good to outstanding classical music recordings over the years, in a variety of venues; and they simply should have known better.