Brahms: Symphony No.3 / Haydn Variations

"Alsop's symphony is fine but it's the Variations that give this disc distinction. Marin Alsop's Brahms series continues with an elegiac account of the Third. There's nothing hysterical here; instead Alsop opts for a certain restrained sadness that permeates every bar. Dignified, never dull, here is an excellent recording at Naxos's usual great price. For a budget label that never pretended to be artist-led, they are certainly attracting quite a few stars these days"
(Editor's Choice Gramophone Magazine March 2007)

"For a modern recording in state-of-the-art sound, you will not hear better playing than this from an orchestra or a more satisfying performance of these two works. ery highly recommended."
(Fanfare Magazine July 2007)

"...in the entire history of the work on disc, there have been perhaps seven or eight truly great performances: Walter (Sony, stereo), Levine (RCA), Wand (his first one with NDR, on RCA), Klemperer (EMI), Jochum (EMI, with this orchestra), Dohnanyi (Warner/Teldec), and perhaps most surprisingly, Solti (Decca).

To this select list, add Alsop. This is not a judgment made lightly, but this is one hell of a fine performance of this most elusive symphony, perhaps closest in character to Dohnanyi's Cleveland version. It's interesting to note the dearth of German or central European orchestras in the above list, and this fact holds a clue to Alsop's success: her ability to keep the textures from becoming too heavy, and to keep Brahms' bass lines moving. Ordinarily, and particularly in the First and Fourth Symphonies, the typically dark, rich German bass is just the ticket, but not here. This symphony, with its obvious homage to Dvorák's Fifth in the same key, and its frequent recourse to syncopated rhythms in the middle registers of the orchestra, needs as much space around the notes as is consistent with lively tempos and well-sprung rhythms.

Part of the problem is of Brahms' own making. While the last three movements offer some of his finest orchestral writing, especially for the woodwinds, the first movement often comes across as a clogged-up mess. Conductors overcompensate for the lack of audible detail by playing the music too slowly. Alsop keeps the music moving, but also clarifies the underlying rhythm quite splendidly. As an example, consider the transition from the first to the second subject, and later on, the triplet accompaniments to the finale's heroic second subject. This is very good Brahms conducting: the tension never sags, no important details go unobserved (note the nicely touched-in contrabassoon just before the recapitulation), and nothing detracts from the evolving symphonic argument.
The Andante features beautifully blended wind playing in its serene outer sections and just the right touch of mystery in the central chorale. Alsop takes great care to observe the written dynamics, a big plus in the ensuing Poco Allegretto, which sounds so much better minus the usual excess of espressivo. Best of all, the finale is spectacular: swiftly exciting, with very present timpani and a tremendously explosive (but remarkably transparent) central climax. The coda captures that special, autumnal glow that Brahms builds into the scoring, but without sacrificing sufficient momentum to bring the work to a fulfilling (as opposed to a merely exhausted) conclusion.
The Haydn Variations makes an excellent coupling, and is equally well done. Alsop's excellent command of rhythm once again is very much in evidence, particularly in the Vivace fifth variation, and even without those darker, heavier bass lines the final passacaglia builds quite effortlessly to a joyous conclusion. Vividly detailed sonics seal the deal. The truth is that very few conductors manage to do all of the Brahms symphonies equally well, which is why the modern tendency to do them in fours is such a pity. This effort bodes well for the conclusion of Alsop's cycle, but at the same time it will be a tough act to follow. I hope she can do it; in the meantime, I'm more than happy to recommend this superb new recording as strongly as possible."
10/10 CLASSICSTODAY.COM

Brahms's Third Symphony is surely one of his most poetic, evocative works, with vivid characterization and individuation of themes and their transformations: the bold chordal chromatic opening gesture heralding and underpinning the sweeping arcs of the first theme, the untroubled pastoral second subject, decisive transmutations in development - the second subject now tragic, the first lyric and monumental; the naïve march of the slow movement, with its nevertheless complex phrase-lengths and cadence echoes, the archaic quasi-chorale with enigmatic harmonies at the movement's centre, the concluding rich, yearning violin melody evolved from the earlier cadences; the rhythmic play in the tunes of the third movement, where 'upbeats' become winsomely relocated and, in the trio, beguilingly accented; the vigorous minor-key finale, with its veiled, anxiously mobile first theme, the solemn brass version of the slow movement's chorale, the athletic, seemingly carefree major second subject, the emphatically defiant end to the exposition, development which fragments the first theme, then glorifies and energizes the chorale; finally the transfiguring apotheosis as the first theme slows, turns to major, combines with yet another variant of the chorale, now peaceful and celebratory, and with a meditative, valedictory return of the very beginning of the symphony.

The conductor of the first performance, Hans Richter dubbed the Third Symphony 'Brahms's Eroica'; this was really a party pleasantry, though one that caught on and engendered serious discussion in the contemporary press. Perhaps more telling were the reactions of Brahms's friends. Clara Schumann wrote to him how, in the symphony, 'one is surrounded from beginning to end by the secret magic of the life of the forest' and Joseph Joachim, little given to such poetic interpretations, heard the story of Hero and Leander in the last movement. Brahms composed the work in Wiesbaden in summer 1883 and his biographer, Max Kalbeck, poet as well as historian, suggested a connexion with the great monument celebrating the German nation being built close by, the statue of Germania at Rüdesheim. He also speculated as to a possible origin of the middle movements in Brahms's erstwhile plan to write incidental music for Goethe's Faust. It is, however, Kalbeck's third proposal that has caught the minds of today's public - that in this symphony Brahms used the musical spelling of a personal motto, the notes F-A-F standing for 'frei aber froh' (free but happy) and giving the work a special biographical slant. While there is abundant evidence that the young Joachim used the motto F-A-E, 'frei aber einsam' (free but lonely), there is none at all to support Kalbeck's inventive suggestion of one for Brahms. Nevertheless, Brahms was free and, in the main, happy, and he did have pronounced ability in making arpeggios into tunes - such are the truths of fiction.

Brahms himself said just one thing about such origins: that the first theme was 'literally transcribed from the Berchtesgaden yodel'. The theme's pitches do indeed replicate those of a Juchezer sung in Berchtesgaden, but the significant lessons here are about transformation as expressive renewal, and about Brahms's love and use of folk-music, for he makes these notes into a sophisticated high-art theme of symphonic scale and potential. Critics from Brahms's time onwards have pointed to altogether different sources for this theme - in link passages in the slow movement of Schumann's First Symphony, and the opening movement of his Third; these resonances are indisputable, though there is no record of Brahms or Clara Schumann ever alluding to them, but again it is the more general implication concerning Schumannesque facets of Brahms's romanticism which has the greater interest. Recently other critics have pointed to resonances from Tannhäuser, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, seeing the symphony as a tribute to Wagner, who had died that February.

All this testifies to the suggestive richness of the Third, yet to understand the foundations of Brahms's expressivity we should go back to Richter's party pleasantry, not for its specific reference to Beethoven's own Third, but for the more general invocation of Brahms's great predecessor, from the study of whose music he had learnt the core of his creative equipment. For Brahms's Third Symphony is the work of a constructivist poet - the far-reaching 'speaking' themes and their telling transformations articulate the established architecture of the classical symphony and make it new, showing how profoundly Brahms understood his loved heritage. In the historical and structural contexts of its sonata and ternary forms, the symphony's contrastive, transformative and reflexive narratives take on correspondingly greater power, fluency and expressive immediacy.

The Third Symphony was first performed on 2 December 1883 in Vienna and became an outstanding success - Brahms's characteristically complex response was to wonder whether he should cancel subsequent performances.

As is well-known, Brahms's path to his First Symphony was protracted and arduous, but on the way a work with less weight of historical precedence emerged relatively easily into the world. He composed his Variations on a Theme by Haydn in summer 1873 at Tutzing on the Starnberger See, first in the two-piano version (giving it the special status of a separate opus number), which he orchestrated that September: the first orchestral performance was on 2 November, Brahms himself conducting. He had long been a Haydn enthusiast, had studied particularly the symphonies and piano trios, had copied canons and other pieces, and he followed the work of the Haydn scholar Carl Ferdinand Pohl. Both Pohl and Brahms believed the melody they transcribed around 1870 was Haydn's own, now doubted by some scholars, who consider it a popular tune of the time, or by a pupil, say Ignaz Pleyel. Brahms made the Chorale St Antoni the basis for the first free-standing set of variations for orchestra, thus founding a genre which became productively popular, for instance with Dvořák, Elgar and Reger, among others. Sketches show Brahms working at contrapuntal intricacy, particularly for the eighth variation, and counterpoint remains a special feature of this variation-set as a whole; he evolved a fugue subject from the theme, at one stage surely contemplating a fugal finale (as in his Handel Variations). He changed his mind also on the sound-world of the very opening, reverting from his initial decision to include strings to Haydn's original wind scoring, and while the work was being published he considered and rejected the idea of allowing a tuba to substitute for the contrabassoon.

The work takes a basic structural feature from Haydnesque precedent: instead of ordering the early variations by increasing figurative animation then switching to minor and character variations, Brahms here chooses the less characteristically classical route of an early pairing of major and minor variations, as Haydn had done, for instance, in his F minor set for piano, and the slow movement of the 'Drumroll' Symphony. There are eight variations. In the first (major) duplet and triplet lines diverge and converge in inverted counterpoint around held notes retained from the end of the theme; the second (minor) adds a dotted-note clarinet line; the gentler third (major) has continuous flowing motion with decorative additions; the fourth (minor) comprises an austere scalic melody and severe counterpoint, with inversion at the 12th; the fifth to seventh variations are all major, offering two different scherzi (another Haydn speciality, of course) and a captivatingly beautiful siciliano on flute. The eighth variation (again minor) comprises fleeting canons in reticent and evanescent contrast to the solemn opening of the finale. There the theme's opening phrase becomes a passacaglia bass, its seventeen appearances offering fresh opportunities for counterpoint and expressive elaboration; finally, with corruscating, festive accompaniment, the theme itself returns triumphantly on full orchestra.