Thomas Dausgaard and his band turn in good but not quite great performances of these two symphonies, at least compared to those on Sixten Ehrling’s outstanding BIS cycle. The Sinfonie singulière suffers particularly from a lack of dynamic expansiveness. Dausgaard’s comparatively small-scale conception reveals itself in the excessively timid brass and winds in the first movement, and a tendency (as with Goodman’s Hyperion cycle) to clip the ends of phrases in quick tempos. Berwald builds-in the music’s lightness; it needs the conductor to give it a touch of gravitas. In the Fourth Symphony (the Sinfonie naïve), Ehrling simply finds more energy and rhythmic incisiveness in the outer movements than does Dausgaard. The low level recording only emphasizes the muted quality of these performances, and for less than the cost of this disc (assuming you don’t want to lay out the money for Ehrling’s full-price two-disc set) you can have Kamu’s fine complete cycle on Naxos. In sum: this isn’t necessary, or really competitive despite the fact that there’s little seriously wrong with it. But that’s life in a glutted market.
