Brahms: Symphony No. 4. - Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic - sound recording reviews

National Review, May 24, 1993 by Ralph De Toledano

GUSTAVE Mahler's contemporaries thought of him as a conductor who wrote music, and to this extent it was true: The orchestra was a partner in his composition, and he knew the plangencies that a solitary horn could utter over the orchestral panoply. In the midst of that sadness--Dieu, que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois--he could break in with a sadder humor, as in the funeral passages of his first symphony. Leonard Bernstein is another conductor who wrote music--though much of his output gives me the longueurs--so there may have been some logic to his having recorded the entire Mahler oeuvre for Columbia Records.

Bernstein recorded prodigiously, and a hundred of his LP works are being reissued on CD as a Royal Edition. (The royalty is not his but Prince Charles's, one of whose schoolboy watercolors graces each album.) I have been listening to five Mahler symphonies in this series--Nos. 1, 2, 7, 9, and 10--recorded with the New York Philharmonic. I would not compare them with Bruno Walter's readings, but I can find no infidelity to what the composer set down. However to get the most out of these scores, there must be absolute precision and a respect for all its voices. Otherwise, the colors seem to run a bit--as they do for Bernstein (Sony Classical SM2K 47573 & SM3K 87484).

Bernstein is much more successful with Brahms's Symphony No. 4 in E Minor. This last of the Brahms symphonies is vintage--tightly knit, beautifully honed, and rich in content. Perhaps Bernstein gives it too much of a Romantic lilt, but the work can take it. With it is the rousing Academic Festival Overture (Sony Classical SMK 47538). Also successful is a Royal Edition issue of a Bernstein-Philharmonic reading of Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 in D Minor--moving and sturdy music which I am told not to like, but which I do (Sony Classical SMK 47542).