Günter Wand, NDR-Sinfonieorchester - Johannes Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4 (2001)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 365 Mb | Total time: 78:51 | Scans included
Classical | Label: RCA Red Seal | # 74321 89101 2 | Recorded: 1983
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 365 Mb | Total time: 78:51 | Scans included
Classical | Label: RCA Red Seal | # 74321 89101 2 | Recorded: 1983
What a Brahms cycle! Günter Wand’s fairly brisk tempos, astute sense of linear clarity, and palpable dynamic intensity often hold a modern-day sonic mirror to Toscanini’s way with the composer. Listen to how the First symphony’s driving introduction ever so gradually eases into the incisively shaped main theme, or notice the fourth-movement introduction’s seamless yet almost improvisatory transitions. The Third’s difficult-to-balance first movement is all of a piece, with the sustained wind passages, brass outbursts, and often buried lower strings contoured in revelatory perspective.