Schubert - Symphony No.9 "The Great"
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Rattle
EMI 339 3822

Release date January 2006

It’s hard to think of a work from the standard repertoire about which there is so little interpretative common ground. This makes Schubert’s Great C Major Symphony an attractive work for the record collector – no two performances by conductors of significance will sound alike. In part this is due to the continued lack of an authoritative critical edition, although Schubert’s often ambiguous calligraphic style will, most likely, make it impossible to reach definitive conclusions about certain aspects of the work. Take the final bar of the piece. Schubert writes a gigantic oblique sign over it (>). It’s impossible to say whether he wanted an accent, or a dimenduendo (or maybe both)! Rattle, in his new Berlin recording, is an accent man, as are Abbado, Günter Wand and Sir Charles Mackerras, to take three recent recordings; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, in his 1992 Concertgebouw version, has a diminuendo al niente – a less convincing solution to my ears, but one followed by many conductors. More crucially, there is the question of the relationship between the first movement’s ‘slow’ introduction and the allegro ma non troppo. Should they be broadly in the same pulse, as Sir Charles believes (and convincingly realises in his recording with the SCO)? Or should the introduction be genuinely slow, with a gradual acceleration towards the allegro? Rattle opts for a broad pacing of the introduction, with a distinctly old-fashioned cantabile style (check out the divisi violas and cellos at 0’58’’). Throughout the work he places great emphasis on a singing style – in his hands the Great C major is less a descendant of Beethoven’s Seventh than a fore-runner of Bruckner. Rattle has said that the Great C Major “…balances a desperate tightrope between heaven and hell, and joy and obsession, and it’s hard to know at any one moment what wins”. This is especially true of the finale, which is on the obsessive side in Rattle’s hands, not least because he includes the repeat. The moment in the coda when manic joy is interrupted by a gesture of pure terror (at 11’02’’) is genuinely shocking – the hammered out unison Cs, underpinned by boneshaking double basses and titanic timpani strokes are reminiscent of the Commendatore’s final appearance in Don Giovanni. Altogether it’s a surprisingly ‘romantic’ interpretation – although Rattle has always had one foot in the ‘historically informed’ school of performance practice, he currently sees the final symphonic statements of Beethoven and Schubert as in some way standing apart from the rest of their respective composers’ output. The Berliners play magnificently for him; there aren’t many ensembles that could play the endless triplets in the Great C Major’s finale without apparent strain, and the brass playing is outstanding throughout. The sound is good, if not ideally spacious, and Richard Osborne’s liner notes are typically thought-provoking.

Sandy Matheson