Schoenberg: Orchestral Works. Ulster Orchestra/Takuo Yuasa (Naxos)
The three works here - Chamber Symphony No. 2, Accompaniment to a Film Scene, and the final string orchestra version of Verklarte Nacht - occupied Schoenberg between 1929 and 1943. But it's actually the composer's early style which dominates; Verklarte Nacht dates from 1899, and the Second Chamber Symphony was begun in 1906, just after the First, but put aside for more than 30 years. The Accompaniment to a Film Scene is a descriptive 12-tone score for an imaginary film, charting imminent danger, fear and catastrophe. Takuo Yuasa conducts the Ulster Orchestra in performances with a decided emphasis on beauty of surface. Inner tension, whether of emotional or harmonic pull, is on the light side. This is a disc for people who like their Schoenberg well sweetened.
Michael Dervan
Schubert: Sonatas D664, D850. Alain Planes (Harmonia Mundi). Schubert: Sonatas D850, D784. Mitsuko Uchida (Philips)
These discs, continuing the Schubert piano sonata cycles of Alain Planes and Mitsuko Uchida, remain true to the spirit already established by the Frenchman and his Japanese competitor. Planes is the straight talker, Uchida the fantasist. Yet, in the big D major Sonata, D850, they both, in their different ways, remind one why Schubert's piano works were for so long regarded as a problematic area. Planes, consistently slower, tends towards plainness and deliberation, Uchida towards dreaminess and delicacy; neither manages to convey the music with a satisfying integrity. Uchida's laden reading of the A minor Sonata, D784, is the more satisfying of the couplings. But in all cases there are more satisfying performances of these works available from the likes of Richter and Brendel.
Michael Dervan
Beethoven: Symphonies 5 & 7. Berlin State Opera Orchestra/Richard Strauss (Naxos Historical)
THE stories of Richard Strauss as a conductor are legion. He was renowned for the minimalism of his gestures. He told the young Karl Bohm, "One must conduct only with the right hand; the other should be in one's pocket." George Szell reported seeing the great man taking out his watch while conducting and speeding up the tempo in order not to miss a post-performance card-game. Yet Strauss's conducting was well-regarded, and he recorded Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies in the 1920s. They're not what anyone today would regard as well-prepared performances, and the recording of the Seventh is constricted and airless. The musicmaking is in the vibrato-shy style of the period and tends towards a driven bluntness. Most of the touches of personal rubato are far from extreme, though there is some see-sawing that will surprise many modern ears.
Michael Dervan
