What a Brahms cycle! Günter Wand's fairly brisk tempos, astute sense of linear clarity, and palpable dynamic intensity often hold a modern-day sonic mirror to Toscanini's way with the composer. Listen to how the First symphony's driving introduction ever so gradually eases into the incisively shaped main theme, or notice the fourth-movement introduction's seamless yet almost improvisatory transitions. The Third's difficult-to-balance first movement is all of a piece, with the sustained wind passages, brass outbursts, and often buried lower strings contoured in revelatory perspective. An organic ebb and flow governs the tempo modifications in the Fourth's passacaglia finale, all to unified and inevitable ends. Tensile strength and lyrical nuance continuously merge as one throughout the Second, and I especially like how Wand underlines the first movement's offbeat accents and overlapping dissonances. Add the NDR Symphony Orchestra's enlivening virtuosity plus a soundstage that conveys slightly more depth and ambient presence in RCA's 2001 transfers than in previous CD editions (RCA, EMI, Pro-Arte), and you've got an essential purchase, available again through Arkivmusic.com's on-demand reprint program. [6/28/2010]

--Jed Distler