It never rains, it pours in the classical music business. Just as Chandos releases a fine recording of Alfredo Casella’s Mahler-meets-Borodin Second Symphony, along comes another, part of a four-disc series from Naxos that will include the Third Symphony (recently released on CPO) as well. Francesco La Vecchia’s performance also is very good–and quite different from Gianandrea Noseda’s Chandos version. Tempos are a bit slower in the first two movements, not a bad thing in this thickly scored music, but while the engineering isn’t as rich in the organ-drenched final pages, textures tend to be clearer, and La Vecchia brings out more of the music’s Mahlerian grotesquerie and delight in dark, gnarly sonorities. The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma sounds a bit stressed at the first allegro, but quickly settles down to deliver an aptly heroic performance.
If you have room in your collection for only one recording of the symphony, the determining factor–aside from price–may be the coupling. Chandos has Scarlattiana, a delightful neo-classical piece that’s available elsewhere. Naxos offers A notte alta, originally a tone poem for solo piano (the score is on IMSLP) but later orchestrated. This richly atmospheric, evocative piece seems to grow out of the symphony’s most mysterious passages, and it sounds like nothing and nobody else. For this work alone, in which the highly adept Sun Hee You takes the (now) obbligato piano line, I would suggest preferring this recording. But the choice is yours, and you can’t go wrong. It’s an embarrassment of riches either way.
