It helps Simon Rattle and his Berlin players that Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic (on DG) already have set the bar in Ein Heldenleben so low that it’s all but impossible to slither under it. Fortunately, while hardly a great performance, Rattle & Co. aren’t that abominable. This performance has some fine moments: the build-up to the battle is wonderfully threatening, and the bits that are basically beyond Rattle’s control (the critics, Guy Braunstein’s solo violin) sound, well, essentially as they should. Elsewhere, as in the opening section, Rattle overindulges his current penchant for glutinous, tensionless legato phrasing that, combined with a lack of firm rhythmic underpinning, tends to hold back the music’s forward progress. It may also be that the circumstances of live recording, with the audience rather annoyingly present, contribute to some off-kilter ensemble in the battle: How is it possible that the woodwinds sometimes sound louder than the heavy brass? But the even-more-static-than-usual final 15 minutes unfortunately are all Rattle’s idea. This isn’t terrible, then, but it is boring, and so very, very unnecessary in today’s market.
As for Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, it’s certainly helpful that this is not a live recording, but the music itself requires fewer players and so doesn’t suffer from the sort of sectional balance problems that seem to be plaguing Berlin in larger works these days. And although the Overture could have even more energy and snap (check out Reiner on RCA), there’s no questioning the generally high quality of the playing. More to the point, the music already is so extravagantly stylized, even mannered in conception that Rattle can’t ruin it with those random pokes and scribbles that so often pass for his interpretive “ideas”. The dances (the two minuets and the courante) are lovely, and the final Dinner achieves a satisfying sense of culmination, with some first-rate contributions from the strings and winds. If only Ein Heldenleben shared this same elevated level of polish and coherence, we’d really have had something. As it is, this release hardly merits your time and attention unless you are a die-hard Strauss completist or Rattle fan.
