Cheap Symphonies 1 - 4 (Music) (Schumann, Zinman, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich) Price

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Customer Reviews of Symphonies 1 - 4

Zinman isn't afraid of setting tempos whose speeds are more commonly met by period instrument groups. As with the Beethoven readings, he uses newly edited sources, and plays everything to the hilt. The Tonhalle seems quite reduced in size in these recordings, such that strings zip along in an altered balance with brass and with woodwinds, compared to the older, slower, heavier performance manner.

Any past muddiness in the orchestral texture simply disappears in this edition, played with Zinman's verve. In some passages, chamber music textures are easily achieved, making you revise your opinions of Schumann's orchestral genius. Even going full tilt, Zinman keeps the touch light and lively and agile.
You feel as if you are meeting the young Schumann, especially as the First Symphony takes off. He has a glint in his eye, does this fellow. Small wonder that Clara's father realized he'd better keep an eye on this visitor around his daughters.

This is the kind of Spring season that makes you want to leave the house, without a coat, finally unencumbered by winter, reticence, and heavy clothing. Depending on just how young you feel, this first symphony may make you want to strip down further, just to feel the Spring breezes on your skin in places where polite musical conversation isn't exposition, but falls back into a murmur, musing out loud about nothing and everything lovely in particular.

Fortunately, even with all this lightness and the reduced size of the Tonhalle, there is still enough weight to make the stronger musical points, though without the kinds of heavy, Romantic indulgence we have sometimes accepted as the norm. Indeed the alleged heaviness of Schumann's orchestrations is nowhere in evidence here. A quicksilver metamorphosis inhabits this music, and Zinman almost uniquely let it play among the departments of the orchestra.

Continuing through the remaining three symphonies, Zinman just keeps making fresh magic in his performances of each of the remaining three. The second symphony's slow movement (for example) isn't the least bit ponderous, but doesn't lose one ounce of its lyrical heart in the alchemical process of its lightening. In fact, with the more transparent orchestral textures Zinman crafts with his marvelous Tonhalle players, you hear many passing moments of felicity in woodwind or string phrasing. These moments are there, too, in the older, heavier performances; but just easier to hear with Zinman. Can it be that Zinman will help you hear and re-hear your older Romantic readings of these symphonies? Seems possible, if you pay attention to the lessons he is teaching.

With the Third Symphony, Zinman manages to bring more shadow, more seriousness to phrasing. Tempos slow down, ever so slightly, so that maestoso can be conveyed, rhetorically. Zinman and band also pass the critical feierlich test in the odd movement, said to have been evoked on the elevation of an archbishop at Cologne Cathedral. Throughout the horn and brass are burnished, with solos that carry more narrative substance. While in the first two symphonies the horns and trombones were blended more with the other brass and woodwinds, their special Solemnity is captured here, even with reduced forces. The slow movement, preceeding the feierlich one, is another miracle of musical inflection and phrasing, without for one second sounding indulgent or mannered. The spirit of chamber music is revealed in this music, every bit as much as the spirit of the symphony.

The Fourth Symphony provides a fitting conclusion to the set. I found myself wishing that Schumann had had more confidence in himself as an orchestral composer, so fetching is the music made throughout this set of four. Who wants it to end? But end it does, with Schumann setting out the ground rules for innovative cyclical form in music; lessons not lost on many of his contemporaries and descendants. As it happens, the added maestoso touches heightened in the second and third symphonies, continue into and throughout the Fourth. The tempo changes no longer seem so awkward, and a contrapuntal depth of story consistently emerges via the enabling consensus of the players.

Truly, there are other valid approaches to Schumann. I will still return to the shelf where sit older, prized CD performances. Sinopoli and Vienna doing the Second Symphony. Haitink and the Concertgebouw doing all four. And, can it be? Zinman and Baltimore, showing how to play these symphonies with something like the old, antique Romance.

The nice thing is, at this price, you really don't have to do without, just because you purchased this set, too. The sound is good enough to completely get out of the way of the music, letting you hear everything Zinman and Tonhalle are doing. The hall isn't especially present, except in those larger moments when it resounds, and the venue point is made.

Five stars, stars, stars, stars. Highly recommended. Do check out the earlier Zinman with Baltimore, now newly released on midpriced Telarc.