I was very impressed by the 3rd, but far less so by the 2nd to which I gave several listens as well as spinning five other recordings. Blomstedt (x2), Jensen, Garaguly and Chung handle the tempo changes making them seem natural. In the first movement Gilbert's roller-coaster approach amounts to unwanted agogic distortion and while he uses a later edition of the score I have to hand I feel the relative tempi as marked don't fit together as they do far more successfully in all of the other recordings I heard. The phlegmatic seems to me to be replaced by the spineless. The third and last movements fare somewhat better, leaving the whole something of a curate's egg, the less good bits too clever by half in this mannered reading, affecting the forward thrust of the work to its detriment. On the other hand, this individual view may well satisfy other listeners far more than it did me.
I got on rather better with Blomstedt in Copenhagen than SF; firstly, there's more atmosphere and personality in the former's performance and secondly, the recording, surprisingly, is easier on the ear. Jensen, sounding better than expected on Dutton also digs deeper, but it is Garaguly, as ever, who produces goose-bumps and makes me want to shout with joy at the end having witnessed the most intense melancolia of them all in the third movement. I didn't listen this time to Berglund or Schmidt as they'd had recent outings and I still rate these very highly and they are better recorded than Garaguly was.
Gilbert's recording is sumptuous but as in his interpretation it also seems somewhat over-egged. I was hoping for more natural bloom and ambience but this gets cloudy in the busier passages and some detail goes by the board. Does Avery Fisher really sound like this?
The 3rd's performance seems to me less affected by all of these points and I'll certainly return to Gilbert's recording of this symphony.
I got on rather better with Blomstedt in Copenhagen than SF; firstly, there's more atmosphere and personality in the former's performance and secondly, the recording, surprisingly, is easier on the ear. Jensen, sounding better than expected on Dutton also digs deeper, but it is Garaguly, as ever, who produces goose-bumps and makes me want to shout with joy at the end having witnessed the most intense melancolia of them all in the third movement. I didn't listen this time to Berglund or Schmidt as they'd had recent outings and I still rate these very highly and they are better recorded than Garaguly was.
Gilbert's recording is sumptuous but as in his interpretation it also seems somewhat over-egged. I was hoping for more natural bloom and ambience but this gets cloudy in the busier passages and some detail goes by the board. Does Avery Fisher really sound like this?
The 3rd's performance seems to me less affected by all of these points and I'll certainly return to Gilbert's recording of this symphony.
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