Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariss Jansons
The RCO's performance history of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony is strangely uneven. Already three years after its completion the symphony was performed by Willem Mengelberg in a programme that also boasted the composer as soloist in his own Piano Concerto No. 3. After that the symphony was performed again in 1921 and then there's a gap of 59 years. From 1980 on no less than 10 conductors (including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kirill Kondrashin and Kurt Sanderling) put it on the RCO's music stands.
Its latest RCO incarnation proved to be an ideal performance.: with Mariss Jansons at the helm, heart and mind of this piece were totally balanced and the opulence of the RCO's sound at the Concertgebouw was perfectly suited to Rachmaninoff's most beloved symphony.
A detailed account.
very beautiful, very pleasant … good recorded sound as well.
Jansons has always been more interventionist. While his speeds have slowed a little and the Concertgebouw acoustic imparts a softer grain, much is as it always has been: the rubato personal and touching, the sudden pianissimos positively breathtaking (unless you judge them to be overdone), the textures shimmery and iridescent, flecked with woodwind colour others miss.
The Concertgebouw strings have rarely sounded lusher, though Jansons never wallows in sentiment, and the wind soloists, notably the yearning clarinet in the adagio, are outstanding...With Tchaikovsky, this is the music in which the young Jansons made his name. He surveys it now with Olympian scope.
Jansons shapes its sumptuous melodies with restraint and detail, making the climaxes more than usually explosive. There’s great clarity in the playing, especially in the long slow movement with its huge clarinet solo...There’s no indulgence and plenty of excitement in this live recording from 2010.
This is a conductor who is fully in tune with Rachmaninov bringing a performance that is unsettled, stormy and full of restrained emotion.
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