Mystery Orchestra 16

[rubio]

Interesting to see the answers. Maybe I manage to learn something if I relisten to some of the clips  .

Is the below Wand recording the live or the studio one? I think I would like to have that lush and mellow No. 5. I also like the sound of the Wand Bruckner live recordings (No. 5 and No. 9) from the same Musikhalle Hamburg.

[M forever]

I am pretty sure it's the studio recording (E). That's the way the original releases were coupled, and also the way they are coupled in the complete cycle box although these have different cover designs. The box contains 5 individual CDs all with the same blue-silver cover design I showed in my post, but they are all coupled like the earlier releases, like that one with a pic of Hamburg on the cover.

I haven't see the live recording (A) in any other incarnation than the one I showed. I don't know if I prefer the studio or live recording. Conceptually, they are very similar, not surprisingly, since Wand didn't conduct pieces "spontaneously" and made up interpretations as he went along. His interpretations were obviously based on many years of study and reflection, and very careful preparation and often lengthy, detailed rehearsals. His work is best summed up in the title of a biography of him in German: "Günter Wand: So und nicht anders" which basically means "like this and no other way".

He wouldn't conduct pieces he felt he didn't "understand" and couldn't "make sense of". For him, all the musical detail had to fit into a larger, seamless concept.

He was about to retire from his post in Cologne and take his pension and hadn't much lined up for the future when in 1974, the phone rang and the program director of the WDR (West German Radio) invited him to conduct a recording of Bruckner's 5th they were planning to make. Amazingly, Wand had never conducted the 5th because he felt he didn't understand the piece well enough. So he declined but then spent a sleepless night wondering if he would ever get a chance to conduct it. The next morning, he called back and asked if they had already found another conductor. The program director told him "no, you know, that doesn't go that quickly", and so Wand agreed to make the recording and spent several months studying the score. And that recording launched his late second career which made him famous.

The main differences here between the live and studio recording may be a certain "sense of occasion" and the more immediate, slightly warmer sound which puts you very close to the orchestra, almost envelops you, while still letting you feel the ambience of the hall. The studio recording is a little more "distanced", both sonically and musically, but equally well structured and played, and a little brighter in sound.

If you like the live recording of the 5th (which is coupled with the 6th), there is also a live recording of the 4th which you can get for next to nothing from amazon which I would highly recommend. It is coupled with a nice performance of the Posthornserenade with a posthorn which actually sounds like a posthorn, not a trumpet.

[Greta]

Thanks for that interesting info about Wand. A conductor I knew practically nothing about and do not own any of his work. A great MO discovery! 

Since I like most (as I liked A very much too) the one from the set, I will defnitely put it on my wish list to buy at some point. I expect his other symphonies would also be high-quality, interesting interpretations as the 5th.

Wow, and the Norrington is a set, I'll have to think about that. It's a fun reading, focused and full of detail, but I'd like to check out the other HIP options before going for his set.

I guess I liked the Abbado the least, though still a good performance, it didn't connect with me as much.

To get to the Solti, I thought that clip was quite fine indeed, I thought the playing showed more character in Wand's but you could tell Solti had paid very close attention to the score with the interplay between sections done well. Also the orchestra balance I had remarked was "nice, no section really stuck out" which is true, it's very good there, but not normally a comment you would associate with a Solti/CSO recording. Just goes to show how the "stereotypes" about what certain orchestras "sound" like (and under certain conductors) just don't hold up, especially in varying repertoire.

[m_gigena]

(on Solti)
I thought the playing showed more character in Wand's but you could tell Solti had paid very close attention to the score with the interplay between sections done well. Also the orchestra balance I had remarked was "nice, no section really stuck out" which is true

I had the same impression. I could only listen to clips A, B and D. And while in A the strings take the lead with the brass a bit hidden (I don't know if it is director's choice, or technical/recording reasons), in clip D each section when requested.

I didn't like clip A too much for its tendence to put an accent in the beginning of every phrase. The sound is great and in general the reading is moderated (I think, without excesses), but I find those initial accents distracting and reducing the cohesion of the work.

I enjoyed the wider vibrato in clip D (at 00:27 and the oboe solo, for example); and I thought this would come from an european orchestra.
The attack of the strings in this clip is quite impressive, as sometimes you can hear the violas scratching a bit the strings, and the hit of the bows can also be noticed (00:13).
On the strings also (but I don't remember when) I found the shifting more attracting on this clip than in the others.

Anyway. I'm late.

[M forever]

Indeed you are, but there will be more MO in the future and Greta will also host a blind listening thread, and we all look forward to your blind comments here and there in the future. It doesn't make too much sense in this context if you add comments here *now*, although you are certainly welcome to, but that kind of defies the purpose of this thread, as you will no doubt understand.

Thanks for that interesting info about Wand. A conductor I knew practically nothing about and do not own any of his work.

Since I like most (as I liked A very much too) the one from the set, I will defnitely put it on my wish list to buy at some point. I expect his other symphonies would also be high-quality, interesting interpretations as the 5th.

Wow, and the Norrington is a set, I'll have to think about that. It's a fun reading, focused and full of detail, but I'd like to check out the other HIP options before going for his set.

I guess I liked the Abbado the least, though still a good performance, it didn't connect with me as much.

To get to the Solti, I thought that clip was quite fine indeed, I thought the playing showed more character in Wand's but you could tell Solti had paid very close attention to the score with the interplay between sections done well. Also the orchestra balance I had remarked was "nice, no section really stuck out" which is true, it's very good there, but not normally a comment you would associate with a Solti/CSO recording. Just goes to show how the "stereotypes" about what certain orchestras "sound" like (and under certain conductors) just don't hold up, especially in varying repertoire.

I think your views pretty much perfectly mirror the majority of views, including mine. I may, or may not, prefer E to A, I really don't know. But I also like D a lot, and yes, Solti is often good for surprises, especially in the "classical" repertoire. He did a fantastic "Le Nozze di Figaro" which may be hard to imagine when you hear how he bulldozed through some other repertoire - I was totally surprised when I first heard that recording.
But Solti is also a good interpreter of Beethoven whom he presents "big", but still definitely "classical" - not at all unlike Wand, although Wand (or, for that matter, Kleiber) is more consequently "thought through", there are some elements in Solti's reading which I find a little out of place in the stylistic context he chose - the overdramatically long and often at the end melodramatically torn off fermatas, the slowing down here and there in the "usual places". Still, a very well done reading which bears repeated listening and I like the great degree of clarity and balance he achieves.

The Norrington reading, as almost everything Sir Roger does, is interesting, provocative, sometimes maybe over the top, sometimes maybe misguided - hard to say and not that important at the end of the day. It certainly is interesting and stimulating listening and much better than a lot of people who just somehow wade through the music.

Which brings us to Abbado's somehow not really very distinguished first complete cycle with the WP from which this clip is taken. Here, as in many of the other symphonies in the set, it is not entirely clear what he is actually trying to do. There is generally very good and stylish playing from the WP, with a high degree of spontaneity but also some unevenness which points to Abbado's rather vague interpretive concept, made up "on the go". Very "live", not necessarily always very "great".
But it is somewhat puzzling that a conductor who had brought a classicist and at the same time modernist quality to many of his readings of romantic music in the past decided for this somehow vaguely late- or post-romantic approach. Maybe that was because he was deep in his Mahler cycle back then, maybe he wanted to present a somehow "Mahlerian" view of the music, hard to say. In any case, he completely rethought his approach to Beethoven later in Berlin, as those who have heard his later DG cycle or watched the concert DVDs know.
There are still some rather enjoyable individual performances in this set, like a very lyrical but also dramatic 6th, and maybe I will "rediscover" and finally figure out his interpretations of the other symphonies later, but the WP can really be better heard in this repertoire in the Böhm and Bernstein cycles and in many great individual recordings, like Kleiber's famous 5th and 7th.


The one thing that did suprise me most in this round though was that no one identified the WP as the orchestra in this clip. I think that orchestra with its characteristic style is quite easy to identify, especially when you get a "good look" at the unique oboes and horns - because of the oboe cadenza I thought this was actually "too easy" when I stumbled across the recording. But I decided to use it anyway because it is not my concept to chose particularly difficult performances, to "fool" listeners.

Yes, these clips were mostly randomly chosen. The live Wand disc just happened to be on my desk because I had just ordered it, and all the other recordings were simply the first 4 which I came across when I dug through the chaotic piles of CDs that my collection is currently "organized" in.

[Greta]

were simply the first 4 which I came across when I dug through the chaotic piles of CDs that my collection is currently "organized" in.

I moved up from boxes on the floor to handsome shelves last week, proud of myself.

You mentioned Mahler, which is coincidentally the subject in my new blind review thread called "Mystery Comparison"! Everyone invited, it's a fun piece and worth delving into. Don't worry about hurrying to post, it'll move a bit slower.

See ya'll there.

[M forever]

I moved up from boxes on the floor to handsome shelves last week, proud of myself.

Can we have a picture of those handsome shelves? It might be inspirational for those of us whose collection crawls around on the floor or sits on ugly IKEA shelves. I was never too happy with the shelves I have and which I packed up for the move. Maybe I will never unpack them again.

[Valentino]

In my opinion some of those IKEA shelves are rather nice, like the Bestå. No competition to www.Montana.dk though.

To topic: It never crossed my mind that A and E were the same hall, band and conductor. Uha.

[M forever]

See, and I thought everybody would *jump* at that, because the oboe cadenza is handled the same, rarely heard way in both.

And actually, if you look at the music and see there is no slur between the long held g with the fermata (see attachment to reply #9) and the following Adagio cadenza. Nearly everyone plays it as one phrase. But that's not what it says there. And it actually makes more sense. We discussed this at length one time in the old forum. We are in the recapitulation here. This is the parallel passage to the opening, bar 20 or so, when the orchestra plays three tutti chords and the violins hold the same long g with a fermata before the tutti comes in with the main motif in ff.

Here, Beethoven builds up the same passage, the orchestra again plays three tutti chords, but this time, instead of the shrieking long g in the violins, just a lonely oboe. What a big surprise. And then, instead of the dadadadaaaa, a lyrical, soft cadenza instead of the "fate" motif.

If we assume that the main motif is somehow the merciless power of fate or something like that (never mind what Beethoven allegedly said about the knocking on the door, I don't think we will ever know if that is authentic or Schindler's poetic invention), this passage has a lot of meaning. It is a rare moment of "calm" and "hope". But fate is not easily halted, and it comes back soon. But not in the crashing tutti form, in the haunting echo like soft entries of the strings after the cadenza.

Nearly everybody plays the passage with a big ritardando leading up to the oboe solo, and most play the tutti chords rather soft and broad, nicely preparing the oboe solo. But that's really not what I think should happen there. I think the orchestra should crash into those chords in such a way that you expect the same outcry and tutti entry as at the beginning. But - instead - this brief fleeting moment of respite and hope. What a genius idea from LvB. But nearly everybody softens this down and takes the element of surprise and the contrast out of it.

I believe the way Wand plays it here makes more sense, and it appears to me to be what the score says. Most other interpreters just play it the way "it's always done".