There’s some very pretty playing here. Previn’s treatment of the first movement’s famous second subject has great naturalness and flow, and the Largo really sounds gorgeous. But of drama or energy, you’ll find no sign at all. The launching of the first movement’s allegro barely registers, the second movement’s great explosion goes off with a whimper rather than a bang, and the finale lacks the rhetorical emphasis that turns it from a mere recapitulation of tunes we’ve heard before into the grand summation that it should be. I like the top to bottom transparency of texture that Telarc captures (note the gratifyingly clear bass lines in the scherzo’s first section), but too much of this performance simply fails to catch fire. The lively and appealing performance of the Carnival Overture isn’t sufficiently important to change this assessment. With some transcendentally great recordings of this symphony (including Bernstein’s on Sony and Ancerl’s on Supraphon) available for the same or less money, there’s no room at the New World Inn for Previn and his band of Angelinos, pros though they might be.
