Preferred version of Brahms Symphony #1

[prémont]

Klemperer confused slow tempi with magisterial outcomes, in my opinion.

I don't think this holds true. Klemperer was just victim of the almost general tendency to slow things down with advancing age. His earlier recordings are equally magisterial but a bit faster.

[DrakeBala513]

That by definition, people in the mainstream have the same views as a lot of other people. If they didn't think the same as other people in the mainstream... they wouldn't be in the mainstream.

Groupthink is what happens in cults.

I agree there.

[Madiel]

To be clear: a major part of the reason I said I'm done here is because this thread is supposed to be about Brahms' 1st symphony, not the recurring GMG position of rejecting reviews as having no value. There's been quite a bit of derailing.

I haven't listened to the 1st for quite a long time actually. I might give my one and only recording (not universally beloved by either professional reviewers or amateur ones, but it works for me) a spin sometime soon.

[Belle]

I don't think this holds true. Klemperer was just victim of the almost general tendency to slow things down with advancing age. His earlier recordings are equally magisterial but a bit faster.

OK, that's a valid point.

[Belle]

To be clear: a major part of the reason I said I'm done here is because this thread is supposed to be about Brahms' 1st symphony, not the recurring GMG position of rejecting reviews as having no value. There's been quite a bit of derailing.

I haven't listened to the 1st for quite a long time actually. I might give my one and only recording (not universally beloved by either professional reviewers or amateur ones, but it works for me) a spin sometime soon.

As I've said, critiques and reviews have their uses.  Most definitely.  I've agreed with negative ones over my lifetime as well as positive ones - in books, music and film.  But they've definitely provided me the tools to write my own which I have done on many occasions regarding film, especially 'vintage' film.  Meanwhile, I'm still listening out for that Brahms #1 which has 'that little something extra' ("A Star is Born").

[Philo]

Thank you, I'll check it out.

These are 3 others that I love: Walter, Barenboim, and Yannick

[Mandryka]

Here's something extraordinary

[Mandryka]

I'll see if I can find it on YT.  Thanks for your comments.  I have Karajan but I think it's a predictable and conservative reading, if I can put it like that.

Testament released a 1988 London concert with Karajan and the BPO, I think it's exceptional.

[Florestan]

If any criticism is just as valid as any other, then I am fully justified in never again listening to Brahms' 1st after the first audition. It bores the hell out of me. The very definition of "Teutonic pretense to profundity ".

[Daverz]

If any criticism is just as valid as any other, then I am fully justified in never again listening to Brahms' 1st after the first audition. It bores the hell out of me. The very definition of "Teutonic pretense to profundity ".

A couple dozen more listens should change your mind...

There's plenty of carefree and appealing Brahms like the Serenades and the String Quintets, so no reason to keep bouncing off what I think of as one of Brahms's "try hard" works (I'd also put the String Quartets in that category, though I don't dislike them).

[Mandryka]

If any criticism is just as valid as any other, then I am fully justified in never again listening to Brahms' 1st after the first audition. It bores the hell out of me. The very definition of "Teutonic pretense to profundity ".

I disagree actually - I think the first movement coda is one of the most profound moments in instrumental music.

[Belle]

Testament released a 1988 London concert with Karajan and the BPO, I think it's exceptional.

Okay, you obviously know much more about the recorded repertoire than I!!  Grateful for your thoughts.

[Belle]

I disagree actually - I think the first movement coda is one of the most profound moments in instrumental music.

It was the writer James Ellroy who accused Brahms of being 'an impotent' and, of course, it's impossible for anybody to make that comment from both a physical and aesthetic standpoint.  The writer (as a serious drunk this could even be his very own projection!) is obviously bigoted about Brahms and his foray into physiognomy is the action of an irrational.  The last movement of the Symphony #1 has that 'climax' element that one finds in the human interaction so we can draw whatever inferences or suppositions we may from that.  But that's all they'd be.

[Belle]

If any criticism is just as valid as any other, then I am fully justified in never again listening to Brahms' 1st after the first audition. It bores the hell out of me. The very definition of "Teutonic pretense to profundity ".

I don't think this so-called 'pretense to profundity is restricted to Brahms.  For me Elgar's music has that quality to a detrimental extent, particularly the symphonies and other bloated choral works. And, of course, Bruckner.  For him bigger was always better and I have to disagree.  In fact, Brahms was very compact in his symphonic thinking;  he wasted no thematic motifs and materials and didn't digress into long forays of self-indulgence like the 'other' school which was in the ascendant during Brahms's lifetime and which caused that well-known rift.  I was always in the corner of Dr. Brahms and his classical models.  He poured new wine into old bottles, as the old saw has it. 

Different strokes for different folks.

[brewski]

I don't really have a "go to" version of the piece, though many of the ones mentioned here sound appealing. I grew up with the Bruno Walter Fourth, so his version of No. 1 is a contender. For more modern takes, I did like Chailly's cycle with the Concertgebouw in the late 1980s, when he was pairing Brahms and Schoenberg, both on concerts and recordings.

[Daverz]

It was the writer James Ellroy

The L.A. Confidential guy wrote about Brahms? 

[Belle]

The L.A. Confidential guy wrote about Brahms? 

Yes.  I'm sure it will be on the net somewhere.  I'm uncertain if it was an original idea by Ellroy or whether he was picking up on something from an essay by Arnold Schönberg.  Ellroy was no musicologist, it has to be said.

[AnotherSpin]

Yesterday I listened to several performances of Brahms's First Symphony. Archival recordings by Furtwängler, Klemperer, and Weingartner were all fascinating in their own ways. I also discovered Levine's Chicago Symphony recording, which was new to me and left a strong impression.

[Florestan]

A couple dozen more listens should change your mind...

There's plenty of carefree and appealing Brahms like the Serenades and the String Quintets, so no reason to keep bouncing off what I think of as one of Brahms's "try hard" works (I'd also put the String Quartets in that category, though I don't dislike them).

Oh, I do like lots of his works. It's just S1 that I find boring and pretentious and I've never found a version which changed my mind.

[Florestan]

It was the writer James Ellroy who accused Brahms of being 'an impotent'

Actually, the first to level such an accusation at Brahms was Nietzsche, who called his music "the melancholy of impotence". Nonsense, of course, like so many of Nietzsche's pronouncements.