Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 - download (MP3 & FLAC)

“I like the gradual gain of momentum through the Allegro towards the impassioned second subject and Simone Young holds back just enough at cadence points to acknowledge their importance. The rarely heard bridge back to the exposition repeat is particularly convincing, as though Brahms is weighing his ideas on a set of scales.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2012

“Almost from the Second Symphony's amply swaying, golden-toned opening bars, it is clear that this is going to be a full-blooded traditionalist reading, unalloyed by 'period performance' scruples. At the same time, Young has evidently reconsidered many of the interpretative habits the score has acquired over time, and rejected some.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2012 ****

“Where Simone Young is at her strongest is in the sense of flow in the music. The feel of organic development and narrative progression in the twenty minutes of the first movement is nicely prepared and executed, with a secure sense of connection from beginning to end...This is a Brahms Symphony No. 2 which is very fine, and will grow on you with time as it has with me.” MusicWeb International, August 2012

“This is a fine example of what you might call 'modern-traditional' Brahms. The orchestral sound is rich and deep-layered, the tempos, if nt quite leisurely, still allow plenty of time to luxuriate in Brahms's long melodies...Not only has Jansons a firm sense of how Brahms's long phrases rise and fall, both minutely and as grand spans, he has a keen ear for Brahmsian polyphony.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2011 ****

“[Jansons] sceptics should turn to this new version to hear how close an affinity he has with this difficult piece. What may appear to be refined restraint in the articulation of the first movement's F-A-F pays off in a superbly calibrated account of the finale...[which] has a huge rustic energy...These are big performances in every sense of the word.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2011

“there is...a genuine feeling of where the music is going, and why. For a live account, this is impressive; it may not be the greatet Brahms Third ever put on a record but it remains a fine one throughout, and the recording quality is first-rate.” International Record Review, July 2011

“John Eliot Gardiner and the ORR continue their Brahms symphonies series with this live recording of No 2, with the heartfelt Alto Rhapsody (soloist Nathalie Stutzmann) and three Schubert choruses as a bonus. Energy and meticulous phrasing truly ignite this score. Strings use limited vibrato, with judicious portamento and expressively varied bowing.” The Observer, 8th February 2009

“John Eliot Gardiner's Brahms cycle, performed across two seasons in several venues, was at pains to place the four symphonies, the German Requiem and the Alto Rhapsody in the context of music that Brahms is known to have admired, and which influenced his own works. For the disc of the Rhapsody and the Second Symphony, recorded in the Salle Pleyel, Paris, in November 2007, that context is provided by three of Schubert's male-voice choruses. Two of them are sung by the Monteverdi Choir in Brahms's own arrangements, while the most substantial, the Gesang der Geister über den Wassern, seems a direct antecedent of the writing for male voices in the Alto Rhapsody, which Natalie Stutzmann sings with gravity. The account of the symphony is impressive too - the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique sounds on more secure form than it was for the London leg of this tour - and Gardiner's swift reading is always dramatically sure footed.” The Guardian, 6th February 2009

“Gardiner's speeds are so relaxed that the music almost falls over. Still, they emphasise the melancholic strain in a work easily pigeonholed as a lyrical effusion. You can also enjoy the wide colour palette of the period instruments of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Nathalie Stutzmann's expressive way with the Alto Rhapsody is a delight; and the Schubert items for male chorus make interesting companions.” The Times, 14th February 2009 ***

“[The 1st movement's opening horn theme is] played on natural horn, already outmoded by Brahms’s time...the phrase is lightly broken, in the baroque fashion. Such well-defined colours and detailed attention to articulation collide with the idea of this work as predominantly warm, relaxed and lyrical, and Gardiner sometimes scrubs perhaps a little too vigorously on the patina of inherited performance traditions. Still, he certainly provokes fresh thinking.” Sunday Times, 1st March 2009 ***

“In the Second Symphony the period strings' lighter articulation gives Brahms's rhythms a sprightlier feel than in many modern sessions. …in Gesand der Geister Gardiner avoids any awkward episodic feeling by making the music tell the story of Goethe's poem fluently and with character.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2009 ****

“Gardiner quotes Walter Frisch's report that Brahms "disliked metronomic rigidity and lack of inflection on the one hand, fussy over- determined expressivity on the other". In the first movement, he and his period instrumentalists strike exactly that balance. This is characterful music-making, complex and subtle.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2009

“Orchestre Romantique et Révolutionnaire's sound is vivid and clear. Nathalie Stutzmann's "Alto Rhapsody" is tenderly shaped, depthless, elegant…this is an arresting and impressive performance.” The Independent on Sunday

“Last year I made the CD of the First Symphony one of my Recordings of the Year. This latest instalment will be on the shortlist for 2009, I feel sure – unless SDG trump this particular ace by releasing Symphony 3 before the year end. One can live in hope.” MusicWeb International

“Marek Janowski's Brahms is refreshingly balanced and free of eccentricities.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2008 ***

“This is music (Symphony No. 3) that refuses to bow to convention and play to the gallery – even to the extent of having all four movements end quietly! It’s notoriously difficult to bring off this work convincingly, yet by negotiating the music’s dramatic contours with complete naturalness, Janowski and his fabulous Pittsburghers create the impression of profound ease and inevitability.” Classic FM Magazine, May 2008 *****

“The second instalment of Marin Alsop's Brahms symphonies series is as authoritative, understanding and warm-hearted as the first.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2005 ****

“This is a late-summer idyll of a performance, easily paced, nicely judged and warmly played.
For first-time buyers it will provide unalloyed pleasure; for older hands it will satisfy without necessarily enlightening or surprising.
It is one of those Brahms performances whose centre of gravity is in the violas, cellos and horns.
This is apt to the symphony's lyrical, ruminative character, though there are times when the music is robbed of its light and shade. In the finale, for example, one rather misses the chill-before-dawn mood of the lead-in to the recapitulation; and one needs a keener differentiation of horn and trumpet tone to catch the final page's incomparable D major blaze. Alsop's account of the third movement is strong in contrast, the oboe-led Allegrettograzioso strangely muted, the quicker 2/4 section done more or less to perfection. That said, you might think the slow movement under-characterised: insufficiently distinct in tone and temper from the first.
The symphony was recorded in Blackheath Concert Hall, the Hungarian Dances in Watford's Colisseum: a bigger, brawnier acoustic that doesn't suit the music quite so well. In dance No 18 in D, one of Dvorák's orchestrations, there is a noisy, cluttered feel to the performance. By contrast, the alfresco No 3 in F, winningly and economically orchestrated by Brahms himself, is played with real charm and style.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“An intensely lyrical No. 2 is matched by a Fourth Symphony of sure intellectual command. Orthodox readings, maybe, but raised to a very high level - and glorious playing from the Berlin Phil.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2013 ****