Continuing its survey of Willem Mengelberg’s studio Brahms recordings, Naxos refurbishes a pair of overtures, a symphonic movement filler, and the conductor’s fascinating 1930 traversal of the Third Symphony. The first movement exposition (with repeat observed) is full of broadenings and emphatic, unsubtle accents on upbeats of certain phrases. As the movement progresses, the conductor largely stays out of the basic rhythm’s way. He takes the Andante at an unusually brisk, freewheeling clip, and some listeners will thrill to his (not Brahms’!) speeding things up en route to the central climax. The Allegretto’s taffy-like ritards grow predictable once you’ve heard one or two, but the Finale is relatively free from eccentricity, as is the “filler” third movement from the First Symphony. Here the inevitable string slides draw little attention to themselves, probably because your ears are focused on the wind section’s dicey intonation.
Once past the heavy-gaited introduction, Mengelberg’s Academic Festival Overture (at least what you can hear through the atmospheric but faded engineering) reveals the Concertgebouw musicians on top form. They play better still in a brooding, convincingly sectionalized reading of the Tragic Overture, and the 1942 Telefunken engineering surpasses the other 1930 Columbia sessions. The latter, by the way, sound brighter on top and clearer in the midrange than in previous transfers, thanks to Ward Marston’s excellent restoration work.
