Search - Brahms, Bruckner, Knappertsbusch :: Symphonies 2 & 3 / Symphony 4

Brahms and Bruckner with Heart

Thomas F. Bertonneau | Oswego, NY United States | 07/05/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Hans Knappertsbusch, known affectionately as "Kna," belongs to the generation of Austro-German conductors that includes Wilhelm Furtwaengler, Hermann Abendroth, and Karl Boehm. Like Furtwaengler, Kna was a Bavarian, a southern German, from the region known for its Catholic faith and easy-going (quite un-Protestant) ethos. "Kna" brings to his Brahms and Bruckner an intuitive, plastic interpretation, which differentiates his readings from the rather more severe ones of Furtwaengler and Abendroth. You could call this Brahms and Bruckner with heart. It is unsurprising that Kna shied from the rigors of Brahms' First Symphony. The bucolic Second was perfctly suited to his personality. He brings out the rustic qualities, the sense of undulating landscape in the rounded contours of the music. In the Bruckner Third, he identifies with the rural dance-impulse so important to and deeply embedded in this, perhaps the least appreciated, of Bruckner's nine numbered symphonies. Kna was an expert in, some might say an addict of, the technique known as rubato: the subtle slowing-dwn or speeding-up of the music to underscore melodic shape and dynamic change. Kna stands at the opposite pole of a contemporary Brahms and Bruckner interpreter like Sir Roger Norrington, who fixes the tempo for each movement and then adheres to it strictly, metronimically. Kna's is music-making based on the pulse and fed by the adrenal-rush that accompanies the unfolding of the musical argument. These are "historical" recordings. So don't expect the latest in spatially defined stereo sound. On the other hand, the warmth and ambiance of magnetic tape documents from the 1940s and 50s, even in mono sound, should not be underestimated. It is a different sound, to be sure, from the digital splendor of contemporary audio productions, but by no means inferior. The Tahra engineers have remastered their archival sources with an ear for depth and clarity. Many classical aficionados shy from the archival catalogue. This Tahra double-CD will prove to them, if they have the temerity to try it, how astonishing the older generation of baton-wielders could be in their concert readings and how faithful the older methods of music-recording could be, as well."