Robert Schumann, ‘Mistakes’ and All

It’s been only a couple of decades since we started hearing the symphonies of Robert Schumann pretty much as he wrote them, in what 19th-Century scholars and interpreters found his reprehensible orchestration: the heavy-footed brass, the gauche doublings (say, winds and strings fortissimo at the same time, in the same register), the unnecessary reinforcement of the string basses by bassoons and trombones, etc.

There can be little doubt that a genius for orchestration did not coexist with Schumann’s lyric inspiration. Still, the canonic four symphonies, with their grand tunes and high energy level, have never slipped entirely from favor.

A century ago, Mahler corrected Schumann’s “mistakes” with his once-widely employed edition of the symphonies. More recently, smart, sensitive conductors and, in the recording studio, smart sensitive producers and engineers, have been able to minimize or even obviate Schumann’s problems without butchering his texts.

Riccardo Chailly, whose relatively limited concert hall experience made him an unlikely choice to assume the responsibilities of being music director of Amsterdam’s venerable Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, has made his most positive recorded showing to date with that ensemble in two of the trickier repertory standards, Schumann’s First (“Spring”) and Fourth symphonies (London 425 608).

The Concertgebouw is an ideal Schumann orchestra, secure in all departments and with an incisively lean, forward ensemble tone made to order for this music. In both works, Chailly favors quick tempos in the fast movements and a broad, singing line within the framework of compact rhythmicality in the slower sections.

Sir Neville Marriner’s interpretations are similarly fleet, uncluttered and well-recorded. He gives us all five Schumann symphonies, that is, including the early, unfinished Symphony in G minor, the so-called “Zwickau” (after the composer’s native town) as well as the symphony-like Overture, Scherzo and Finale, Opus 52, and the “Manfred” Overture (Capriccio 10 997, 3 CDs).

Marriner merits high marks above all for his lively, sharp-edged readings of the scherzo movements and the textural clarity maintained throughout. He has an agile, responsive orchestra at his disposal but one lacking the Concertgebouw’s virtuoso horns and distinctiveness of wind tone.

Then too Marriner’s interpretations, while generally convincing, lack weight in such grandiose moments as the opening surge of the “Rhenish” and the final, heroic pages of the Second Symphony.

In traversing the four numbered Schumann symphonies conductor Armin Jordan, his Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and their technical crew seem intent on exacerbating every problem Schumann encountered in writing these works (Erato 2292, 2 CDs).

Tempos tend toward the sluggish, which hardly clarifies the gummier examples of Schumann’s orchestration. Balances are often awry--more so than can be blamed on the composer--and, while the solo oboe is palpably weak, wind detail in general is insufficiently pointed and sometimes buried, as in the slow movement of the “Spring” and in the “Rhenish” finale.

Schumann overcame his difficulties regarding orchestration when the piano was involved. His two undeservedly neglected, medium-length pieces for piano and orchestra, the Introduction and Allegro appassionato, Opus 92, and the Introduction and Concert Allegro, Opus 134, are poetic and finely wrought, showing a sensitivity to solo-orchestral balance comparable to that found in the familiar Piano Concerto.

These attractive compositions, grandly played by Rudolf Serkin, are generous bonuses attached to the budget-priced CBS reissues of Serkin’s thunderously dramatic 1960s recordings of the Brahms piano concertos--Opus 92 with the B-flat Concerto (Odyssey 46273), Opus 134 with the D-minor Concerto (Odyssey 46272)--all with the late Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Nor is there anything puny other than the price in the EMI/Angel Laser series reissue (62859) of the late John Ogdon’s powerful, handsomely crafted reading of the Schumann Piano Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Paavo Berglund. The 76-minute-long program further includes Ogdon’s strongly profiled performances of the Grieg Concerto and Franck’s Symphonic Variations.

The notion of CDs priced for lean financial times--EMI’s Lasers, Deutsche Grammophon’s Musikfest series and London’s Weekend Classics have been spotted for as little as $6 in the larger chain stores--bears watching, and encouraging.