The realisation that the four Brahms symphonies don’t have to be performed by an orchestra of 70 or 80 players has taken a while to translate into performance practice. It was well known that the composer himself favoured a band of around 50 – the premiere of his First Symphony in Karlsruhe was given by an orchestra of 49, and that for the Fourth, in Meiningen, had 48. But it’s only in the last few years that conductors – including Robin Ticciati, Thomas Dausgaard and Adam Fischer on disc – have demonstrated that using smaller forces need not in any way diminish the power and effectiveness of the music. Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s cycle, taken from his concerts with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at Baden Baden in the summers of 2022 and 2023, is the latest to follow that trend.
The gains in clarity and litheness from using a smaller body of strings are obvious from the very start, from the way in which Nézet-Séguin launches the First Symphony; the opening bars seem less glowering and portentous than they so often can be, and throughout the cycle his choice of tempi, quite often faster than most conductors’, without ever seeming unduly rushed or overexcitable, emphasises that athleticism too. If the First Symphony is perhaps the biggest beneficiary of his approach, there are gains and revelations to be found in all four works; the wind writing in the slow movement of the Second has a chamber music-like intimacy, the Allegretto of the Third a relaxed flexibility, the finale of the Fourth, an irresistible drive and intensity. The authority and the quality of the performances are unmistakable.
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