Interpreting Bruckner, Brahms and Beethoven

Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony introduces to recordings (Teldec 73243) the much-publicized union of veteran conductor Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic.

Bruckner is a presumed Masur specialty since Masur, in his mid-60s, is a conductor of the “old school,” i.e., central European, who has been tilling these fields all his life.

From the work’s opening measures--that gorgeous, upward-rolling vision of infinite expanses, decribed by horns and cellos--we remain earthbound with a square reading that projects neither lift nor heat nor tension. Nothing goes awry because no chances are taken, no passions exhibited.

Tune in, rather, to interpreters who project their conviction in the work’s greatness. Sample, via recordings, the differing ways in which those opening measures are shaped (and do stay for the remaining hour) by such probing, passionate Brucknerians as Eugen Jochum, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Carlo Maria Giulini and Bernard Haitink.

There are pleasant surprises in the Brahms First and Fourth symphonies (Philips 432 121 and 426 391, respectively) in which Seiji Ozawa conducts the Saito Kinen Orchestra, an annual summer reunion of his fellow graduates of Tokyo’s Toho Gakuen School. Ozawa gives every indication of being happier and more engaged with these sometime colleagues than with his day-to-day companions and frequent adversaries, the members of the Boston Symphony.

Of the two recordings, both handsomely executed, the Fourth is the more compelling: well-shaped, with a particularly fluid, mellow andante. The First, a solid if too polite interpretation, suffers chiefly from an ill-defined recording.

Philips’ and Ozawa’s shortcomings are most evident when their Brahms First is placed beside the 1968 version from George Szell and his Cleveland Orchestra, as warm and unhectoring an interpretation as this legendary tough guy left us, recorded in thrillingly raw, pre-digital sound.

It has been re-released in Sony’s bargain “Essential Classics” series (46534), with Brahms’ “Haydn” Variations and some of the Hungarian Dances that also serve as makeweights for Ozawa’s Brahms symphonies.

The availability of a reading as clear-textured as Szell’s makes Roger Norrington’s Brahms’ First something less than revolutionary.

As ever with Norrington and his period-instrument London Classical Players, there is no feeling of novelty for its own sake. This is mobile, clean-limbed Brahms, confidently delivered, yet more businesslike and lightweight than even one who does not worship at the Brahmsian shrine might wish (EMI Classics 54286, with the “Haydn” Variations).

There may hardly be a crying need for another Beethoven “Eroica,” but there is a welcome whiff of old-time nobility, amid all the newfangled hot-to-trot interpretations, about the production from 80-year-old Gunter Wand and the Hamburg NDR Symphony (RCA 60755, with the “Leonore” Overture No. 3).

This is a slowish reading that nonetheless maintains momentum and builds to some splendid climaxes. It has shape, pace and accuracy without being prissily proper.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt is a conductor unlikely ever to worry about propriety. He has been going his own way for a quarter of a century with his often outrageous period-instrument interpretations of Baroque music while committing unspeakable acts on the Mozart operas with modern-instrument orchestras.

He has nonetheless had a profoundly energizing influence on others dedicated to reinventing, in different ways, the sound of 18th-Century music.

The latest Harnoncourt venture is the nine Beethoven symphonies (Teldec 46452, five CDs), played not on period instruments (except for the valveless trumpets) but by the modern appliances of the excellent Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

What is clear from a cursory listening is that Harnoncourt’s bad-boy leanings are in abeyance. And he isn’t prone to goody-goodyism either. His Beethoven is rhythmically alert and clear-textured, smartly paced, with plenty of Schwung but without the precipitate tempos and curt inflections favored by Norrington in his celebrated set of the nine.

High-speed listening further suggests that Harnoncourt’s demystifying, somewhat miniaturizing approach to the “Eroica,” and the Fifth and Ninth symphonies, is unlikely to overturn fixed notions of their heroic grandeur.

In all, there’s life here. And sure signs that Harnoncourt has progressed well beyond the nut-case status previously conferred on him in some quarters--including this one.