After the great operas of Mozart and the symphonies of Schumann, Mendelssohn and Beethoven, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and his faithful and beloved Chamber Orchestra of Europe are releasing their complete Brahms symphonies on Deutsche Grammophon, recorded in concert in 2022 and 2023 in Baden-Baden. How was this composer served by the performers and how does the artistic approach of the Quebec conductor fit in or stand out from this heritage?
Right from the start, the Brahms album by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre de chambre d’Europe catches the eye with a visual surprise: the clothing color — otherwise very beautiful — worn by the conductor and the matching setting created by the photographer. Fuchsia pink is not intrinsically the shade that one would match with this tormented composer.
Coded messages
Paralyzed by the tutelary shadow of Beethoven and his nine symphonies, Brahms reached the age of 43 before he managed to compose a symphony. The challenge was to find a way to continue symphonic composition in classical form without resorting to program music.
If we listen carefully, we find in the development of 1er movement of the 1D Symphony cells of four similar notes at the beginning of the 5e Symphony Beethoven. Some conductors (Günter Wand) have made the recurrence of these cells, finally swept away, a struggle in which Brahms warded off his fate as a post-Beethovenian composer.
But Brahms’s struggles are often hidden. We have mostly seen in the 2e Symphony a ” Pastoral Brahms’s “. But the composer opens all the avenues. In the summer of 1877, he writes to his friend Hanslick that his symphony is “lovely and joyful”. Four months later, he writes this to his publisher, Simrock: “The new symphony is so melancholy that you will not bear it.” Such is Brahms: master of illusion. Is he telling Simrock the truth? In 1879, he will mention to Lachner the need for “the necessary darkening of the joyful symphony”…
Many things in Brahms could be explained by what Nietzsche detected there: the dimension of “secret dream” (” Homely Schwarmen “). We can obviously imagine the shadow of the inaccessible Clara Schumann looming there. The lovelorn movement par excellence would then be the Poco allegretto of the 3e Symphonymusic so well-known that it illustrates the film Goodbye Again (Do you like Brahms?) by Anatole Litvak, with Ingrid Bergman, and becomes a song, from Frank Sinatra to Serge Gainsbourg.
There are also codes of German Romanticism. In this same 3e Symphonythe notes used at the beginning of the 1er movement are the abbreviation of a Brahmsian motus ” Free but cold » (free but happy) which can be opposed elsewhere, in the composer’s work, to the motif called « Free but only » (free but lonely). The Third contains references to the Third of Schumann, and therefore to the Rhine, the emblematic river of romanticism.
The cycle ends with an extraordinary movement: the finale of the Fourth in the form of a passacaglia, or a varied theme, the genius of the composer being that the form disappears behind the expressive power. For Brahms is a master of form, as, in the post-Beethovenian symphony, Bruckner and Mahler. In musical matters, form is architecture, with a great interpretative impact: one cannot escape or frolic in all directions, all sides; there is an internal logic to the maintenance of the building.
Brahms yesterday
Just as in the interpretation of Beethoven’s symphonies, it was the conductor Felix Weingartner who, at the beginning of the 20th centurye century, restored order on the aesthetic level by advocating a return to fidelity to the score. It should be noted that at the end of the 19th centurye century, performers took the liberty of adapting things to “make the works sound better.” Mahler, who was a conductor first and foremost, reorchestrated Beethoven’s symphonies, for example.
The discography teaches us that throughout the 20th centurye century, the great European orchestras played Brahms “in their backyard”, Berlin and Amsterdam being more impressive than Vienna, moreover, through the complete works of Herbert von Karajan (1963, 1978, especially, and 1984) and Claudio Abbado in Berlin. Bernard Haitink embodied, for his part, the excellence of Amsterdam.
The determining element of these integrals, besides the talent of the conductors to understand the style and bring the structure to life, is the sound texture, which is born from the low strings, as during a walk in the forest where one starts from the undergrowth to raise one’s eyes towards the light.
Until the 1960s, this “Germanic” culture was opposed by a more gritty and lapidary American style, embodied mainly by the Hungarian conductors Ormandy in Philadelphia and, above all, Szell in Cleveland. In the midst of the global homogenization of styles and sounds from the 1970s onwards, the remarkable Dohnanyi-Cleveland (Teldec) integral in the 1980s preserved this heritage to some extent.
The novelty of the last quarter century, which leads precisely to the complete works of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, has been the arrival of two new types of proposals. Some conductors (Norrington, Gardiner) have extended to these symphonies the reflection on the so-called “historically informed” practice of bowing, the sparing use of vibrato and, sometimes, the use of gut strings.
There have also been proposals to reduce staff numbers. In this respect, we sometimes speak of the “Meiningen Orchestra”. This name refers to an orchestra of about fifty musicians who created the 4e Symphony. This force was therefore advocated by Charles Mackerras and Paavo Berglund in their complete works, even if Brahms’ dream was always to have his symphonies premiered in Vienna with the opulent Philharmonic. Brahms imagined “large” rather than “average”.
That said, the use of an “average” orchestra (in size), such as the Chamber Orchestra of Europe here, corresponds to a sort of spirit of the times: it allows for fast, dry, reactive interpretations, with a “palpable” side. Stylistically, we return, with a different sound, to the lapidary side typical of a certain North American “de-Germanization” of the 1940s and 1950s.
Brahms today
In the vein of lightened (or rather “thickened”) interpretations, some conductors, notably Paavo Järvi (rather very well) and Thomas Dausgaard (pedantically), have mixed chamber orchestra on modern instruments and “baroque” phrasing. This is not the case of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who uses the Chamber Orchestra of Europe for its velocity and responsiveness, not to give lessons in pseudo-musicology, even if his use of vibrato remains contained in the 2e SymphonyFor example.
So, how does the Quebec conductor fit into the discography? First point: the approach is coherent. It has a backbone and follows a guiding principle: the vital sap largely takes precedence over romantic outpourings. Second point, which allows everyone to know whether they feel concerned or not: one should absolutely not expect the round and enveloping sound of a typical “Brahmsian” symphony orchestra.
To take the example of the low strings, we tend to feel the grain of the strings of each instrument more than the softness of a music stand. This orchestral X-ray, rather dry it must be said, is used to serve a muscular purpose. Metaphorically, it is a quick trip in a convertible car to go to a green salad and white fish dinner rather than a trip in a limousine to go to a banquet.
We therefore admire the athletic side and the commitment of the approach, while deploring a lack of warmth, “paste” and singing. But, in this obedience, it is very well done and more lively than the Berglund integral (Warner) with the same orchestra. Interesting psycho-acoustic phenomenon: the Symphonies nbone 1 And 2 had been filmed and broadcast in 2022. Seeing the orchestra and the conductor struggling with the music in this way had made a major impression on us in the Second. Without the vision of this communion between conductor and orchestra, the somewhat clinical side dulls a little (1er movement especially, because the 3e and 4e remain exhilarating) our adhesion of the time.
If one is looking for a “de-bourgeoisified” Brahms compared to the Karajan, Haitink or Abbado complete works, without going towards chamber orchestras, Dohnanyi and Chailly offer relevant versions. In the versions with reduced orchestras, the choice is now between Mackerras, Paavo Järvi and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.