No need to dwell on the unfortunate facts here: Tintner’s excellent Mozart release in Volume 1 of Naxos’ Tintner Memorial edition demonstrates that he knows his way about the Viennese classics, as indeed we might have expected. Here, in these two Schubert symphonies, he adopts lively tempos and shows an unerring sense of each work’s structure and dramatic thrust. I particularly like the vivacious scherzo in the Ninth (with a minimum of repeats, thank god!), and the sustained momentum in the same work’s finale. The first movement of the “Unfinished” also has some nice touches of rubato that point up the music’s Gothic gloom.
But it’s all done in the service of playing that’s just plain awful. Scruffy strings, absolutely gross trombones (in the outer movements of the Ninth particularly), intonationally challenged woodwinds (slow movement of the “Unfinished”), and ensemble balances that recall those wretched high school orchestras where the winds and brass actually outnumber the violins produce a caricature of what this music should sound like. Against a field that includes some of the very greatest recordings ever made, these performances don’t stand a chance. Tintner’s admirers doubtless will claim that they can hear “through” the grotty playing, and indeed it’s quite clear that given a great orchestra he probably would have made a lovely Schubert disc. For his fans, that knowledge may well be enough. It isn’t for me.
