Search - Johannes Brahms, Adrian Boult, Janet Baker :: Brahms: Serenades Nos. 1 & 2; Haydn Variations; Academic Festival Overture; Tragic Overture; Alto Rhapsody

Brisk, no-nonsense Brahms, but an outstanding Alto Rhapsody

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 06/18/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"It's a great bargain to have both of Brahms's sunny Serenades on a two-fer with his two overtures and the moving Alto Rhapsody. Adrian Boult was always a clear-eyed, unsentimental conductor, but perhaps he goes too far here. I'd like to hear the Academic Festival Over. done with affection, not simply run through its paces. The serenades are better, in parts, because they benefit from a light, quick approach--too often they seem to be conducted with as much weight as the symphonies. But quite often Boult rushes the tempo in slow movements and seems impatient with Brahms's genial, relaxed humor. (These recordings were made near his death in 1983, and like Stokowski and Toscanini, Boult sped up in old age.)



The Tragic Over. is a dud, for the simple fact that Boult's account isn't remotely tragic; it's brisk and loud, and again he seems impatient to get things over with. The Haydn Variations find him adhering to more ocnventional speeds, and although the mood is sitll no-nonsense, his reading has its exciting moments.



That leaves us with the real gem of the set, the Alto Rhapsody with Janet Baker, a recording that thrilled me when I first heard it on LP in the early Seventies. I sitll think that Baker, although not an alto, sings with more fervor and religoius exaltation than anyone else, and Boult's faster tempo adds to the tension; the singing by the John Aldis Choir is also unsurpassed."