Michael Gielen leads a peculiar and ultimately unsatisfying Brahms Symphony No. 2. The peculiarity resides mainly in the first movement, which has an oddly fragmented quality as if the music were a collection of unrelated individual passages. Gielen’s sonic conception is similarly at odds with the composer’s. Instead of Brahmsian rich textures and solid sonority, everything sounds strangely desiccated and out of focus. The string accompaniment almost swamps the cello’s theme in the second subject. The woodwinds suffer from the same treatment at various points, such as the overlapping chord passage in the development, where the important brass contributions also sound anemic.
The inner movements thankfully feature fewer oddities, with a warmly textured, smoothly flowing Adagio and an appropriately delicate and charming Allegretto grazioso. However, the finale (as is often the case) suffers from heaviness and lacks the zest found in (say) Jochum’s and Walter’s performances.
After this I was expecting more of the same in the Haydn Variations, a piece in which so many conductors play the St. Antonii Chorale in a dull and dutiful fashion, setting the tone for the remainder of the work. How surprised I was to hear Gielen render it with a bright, holiday spirit! In fact, the entire piece thrives on the conductor’s lively tempos, light-hearted phrasing, and vibrant energy, all realized by the SWR Symphony’s marvelous playing. This is one of the finest, most enjoyable Haydn Variations on disc (which boosts my overall rating up a notch). Unfortunately, it’s shackled to an ineffectual Brahms Second, and unless you have a particular fetish for the Variations, you’d do better to go with the recommended alternatives.
