Georg Tintner’s reputation today rests almost entirely on his largely excellent and refreshingly quirky cycle of Bruckner symphonies for Naxos, so it’s good of the label to agree to issue some performances that allow us to round out our picture of this fine musician in the wake of his very sad death, even if Symphony Nova Scotia is not exactly an orchestra to write home about and the quality of some of these live and broadcast performances is bound to be variable. One thing’s for sure: despite some scruffy string playing here and there (check out the opening of the Haffner Symphony’s finale) Tintner was a fine Mozartean in what we might call the “new” German tradition of, say, Günter Wand.
In the Paris and Haffner symphonies, trumpets and drums cut through the orchestral fabric as they should, tempos are always lively, and the phrasing is shapely and expressive in the andantes (which never sound too slow). Tintner gives a mostly terrific performance of the great G minor symphony, clearly the result of much preparation and care, and my only quibble is that he takes all of the repeats, resulting in a 14-minute slow movement that overbalances the rest of the work. I’m not a fan of the second-half repeat in the finale either. The symphony should end at the end. But the playing here also rises to the occasion, and sonically these live performances sound just fine, warmly recorded and naturally balanced. With so much competition in this music, this series is clearly aimed at admirers of the conductor rather than at the general listening public, but anyone acquiring this disc will likely enjoy the always musical and communicative performances on offer.
