Great Perf: Symphony No.1 [Original recording remastered]

This is classic George Szell. In fact, this performance of the Brahms 1st takes its place near the top of the heap amongst some very stiff competition: it is a great performance and an excellent addition to any collection, especially at mid-price. All the Szell discipline is on full display here- if you're looking for the a bit more overt emotion, try Bruno Walter or Otto Klemperer, as they both turn in ectsatic and soulful readings. Szell's take has a quicker, drier, and more immediate feel to it, but he totally makes it work: in my opinion that goes for just about everything he performed (there was a reason he is known for his precision). The Ormandy performances of the Hungarian Dances are equally rewarding, played with Philadephia's shining flourish. Classic.

For this reissue, the Sony DSD remastering process has very artfully restored the full range of sonics to this recording from the somewhat compressed original master. What an improvment! Highly recommended- let's hope Sony decides to give the rest of Szell's Brahms the same treatment.

Only Toscaninni led the Brahms First with more tension and drive, but the closest approximation is this classic Szell performance, which has been widely admired for over four decades. There has been a budget issue since 1991, in indifferent sound. As of August, 2006, there's this new DSD version in Sony's best remastering technique. Szell's condcuting, as always, is disciplined and devoid of rubato or sentimental softness. The secret when the reins are held this tight is to propel the music forward as if in one breath, never letting the stainless steel thread sanp.

It's an unconventional way to approach Brahms but a bracing one. Fortunately, Szell doesn't lapse into rigid time-beating: this reading is alive inside, full of dramatic events in every movement. The Cleveland Orch. plays with great power and transpaency, and the refurbished sonics are twice as good as they ever were on Epic lPs when this recording first appeared. Of a piece is Szell's highly controlled reading of the Haydn Vairations. Curiously, in both this version and the new reissue, Sony has tacked on five Hungarian Dances by Ormandy, which don't sound like they even come from the same planet as Szell's Brahms but make nice listening.

Perhaps I should have waited a bit to write this brief review, because I'm still in the process of thinking about this performance of the Brahms First Symphony, a remastering of one installment in his recording of the composer's four symphonies with the Cleveland Orchestra. For a full Brahms cycle, my current preference is Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic on Sony -- a set of recordings that have heft and yet retain a good dose of humanity as we climb the mountains. If you prefer pure granite, then I would go with the classic Klemperer set on EMI. This Szell rendition, on the other hand, seems to go off in another set of dimensions, and I don't mean that as a criticism. There isn't the dose of vulnerable humanity that touches the Bernstein, and yet this relative absence of personal scale doesn't mean we're left with Klemperer's steep and rocky cliffs either. Much of the work, particularly the final movement, is taken rather fast, something which at first I found off putting but to which I've become accustomed after repeated listening. In a way, in this performance the Brahms First Symphony is rendered almost as if the early Romantic period had never happened, as if we'd gone straight from the Classical era of Haydn and Mozart straight into the second half of the 19th Century, bypassing Schumann and Weber and the like. So far, the recording is growing on me -- I don't know that it will ever surpass Bernstein, or Klemperer on my more expansive days, but I like it for its different take on a familiar work. And the Haydn Variations benefit from the same sensibility.