Search - Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Kurt Sanderling :: Beethoven: Symphony No. 6; Brahms: Concerto for Violin and Cello, Op. 102

Ponderous Brahms, Non-competitive Beethoven

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 01/09/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Much as I admire, generally, the conducting of Kurt Sanderling -- his Brahms symphony set is one of my favorites -- and the playing of violinist Thomas Zehetmair and cellist Antonio Meneses, this performance of the Brahms Double Concerto never quite catches fire. The first movement, with its thick late-Brahms orchestration, can turn clunky in the hands of a conductor not alert to the danger, and unfortunately that is what happens here. The engineering is partly at fault. The delicious second movement is OK but not rapturous as it can be, and indeed as it was in an earlier recording with Meneses partnered by Anne-Sophie Mutter Johannes Brahms: Violinkonzert/Doppelkonzert. The third movement is the best of the lot and yet, again, there are other recordings out there -- e.g.,the aforementioned Mutter/Meneses and my favorite with Perlman/Rostropovich Brahms: Double Concerto; Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto -- that are better. No, this 1985 recording, recorded live for a radio broadcast, is an also-ran.



The two-CD box is completed by an unexceptionable performance of Beethoven's Pastorale Symphony with the WDR SO Köln, and his Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, featuring Sviatoslav Richter with the USSR RTV Large Symphony with and the State Academy Russian Chorus. The latter is a marvelous, if sonically badly dated, performance that is available in an all-Beethoven set with Richter. I still prefer any of Rudolf Serkin's recordings of this underrated work.



Adding insult to injury, this set is full-price but each CD has a paltry timing: CD1 46:45, CD2 54:16



Scott Morrison"