Hearing Pedro de Freitas Branco conduct the Portuguese premiere of Vaughan Williams’ Ninth Symphony was a real eye-opener, or, more accurately, a veritable ear-cleaner! This live performance took place one month after Adrian Boult led the work’s recorded premiere just hours after Vaughan Williams’ death. We might assume that Boult’s close association with the composer would give his recording a comfortable edge over a Portuguese orchestra coming to this score without benefit of performance tradition. Well, guess what? Freitas Branco secures tauter ensemble, leaner textures, and more horizontal clarity from his musicians, thanks in part to his bracing tempos in the first, second, and fourth movements. By contrast, his deliberation in the scherzo brings out the music’s grimmer implications, and more importantly, allows the flickering saxophone passages to speak their strange peace. The orchestra gets a little tired toward the final pages, but not to the music’s detriment.
David Oistrakh’s Tchaikovsky Concerto is a known and precious quantity via his classic studio recordings with Konwitschny (DG) and Ormandy (Sony). This live version from 1960, however, ups the expressive ante several notches. Freitas Branco, for starters, provides an absolutely electrifying accompaniment, full of vibrant detail and alert rhythmic dovetailing. Oistrakh plays his heart out. He spins long, flexible lines in the slow movement and creates heart-stopping suspense in his unaccompanied lead-in to the finale’s winged main theme. From a technical standpoint, the National Symphony seems more comfortable in this score than the Vaughan Williams, and the archival engineering boasts more resonance and bite.
