Schubert • Schumann

Schumann: Symphony No. 1 (Spring); Schubert: Symphony

No. 3 in D

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/mariss Jansons

BR Klassik 900176 58:11 mins

A good account of Schumann’s First Symphony can remind one that there’s so much more to the ‘Spring’ element than gentle Romantic pictorialism. The sense of rebirth, expansion and of slightly dangerous exultation is crucial.

Mariss Jansons’s Schumann 1 is never quite dangerous, but it is fresh, affectionate and in places exhilarating (and well recorded). No one hearing this is likely to repeat the old canard that symphonic music wasn’t really Schumann’s metier, or for that matter that he couldn’t orchestrate; but is it possible to sacrifice too much to the idol of logical coherence? Some of the best moments in this work are those where Schumann seems to open out vistas beyond the classical symphonic frame. The horn and flute cadenza in the finale is the most gorgeous of these, but in this performance it passes by just a bit too quickly.

Intensity rises a notch or two in the Schubert, and it’s good to see this remarkably precocious symphony appreciated for what it is rather than allocated to the ‘charming but slightly inconsequential’ category under which so much early Schubert is half-acknowledged, half-dismissed. The Allegretto second movement is really lovely: well-shaped and delicately expressive, with those wonderfully relaxed outdoor moments where popular music seems to walk straight in from the streets and fields nicely judged. Good to hear a slight pre-echo of the demonic Schubert in the finale. It’s still some way short of Carlos Kleiber though. Stephen Johnson PERFORMANCE ★★★ RECORDING ★★★★