My first impressions:
Yes, this performance is on the long side with many moments of frank overindulgence, but the tempo relationships and fluctuations still flow naturally and the orchestral detail is really captured like I've never heard before.
This is the SACD (DSD stereo) layer I'm reviewing here. NOTE: This disk doesn't have a 5.1 SACD layer for those with that feature.
The low brass and strings, percussion, and high strings are captured equally and the woodwood and horns are often heard arising from the texture of the orchestra with great beauty...produced and engineered by the same guy who does all the Exton Mahler recordings (his name slips my mind at the moment).
I personally feel Oue is as intense as Bernstein's RCO account on DG...at least in the first and fourth movements, and almost as powerful as Lenny in the Rondo. If only Oue had the RCO here, or the BPO...but the NDR is really fantastic here...showing powerful forces in the climaxes, and atmospheric sound during the quiet moments. I have no large complaints with the playing.
Wow...the second movement is really slow, perhaps too slow for it's own good, but it works if only to show a warmer side to this music, like Bruno Walter's late style...and the music sounds more humorous than usual too. It takes getting used to at first, but if anything it shows another viewpoint for this music. This movement made me think of Klemperer...who at his best could make a slower tempo really effective and his Landlers movement is almost as long as Oue's. Is Oue ultimately successful here? Well, I never got the feeling of being tired, or impatient, so perhaps he makes it work. Time will tell.
The Rondo has power, and also reminds me of Klemperer, as the progression is not eloquent but rather lumbering in pace. It is also not as sarcastic or "fast dashing to the finish line" as a Bernstein, Macal or Barenboim, but effective in the brass details and overall enthusiasm heard in the execution, and the middle section sounds very raw, but romantic and cosmopolitan too...a quality I really love, since this is how I hear Bernstein's way with this movement too in his later accounts. Like Bertini, Oue takes the middle section a little slower than most. The final moments to the Rondo are truly breathtaking and heroic, and sound larger than life, thanks to the awesome timpani and brass.
As much as Macal is a surgeon in the first movement, or deconstructionist...Oue is the full-on, heart on sleeve romantic, almost like Walter in many ways, except the strings are rawer than the BPO or Vienna, and hence, gives Oue's romanticism a harder edge. Like MTT, Oue milks many details in the transitions, which I tend to savor, but to one more inclined to Gilbert's objective approach, may not like at all. Each climax is earth shaking and very vividly captured in the sound quality (the tamtam as exploding as Olson’s latest M9 from Colorado, but perhaps sounding even larger)...the bass drum and timpani jump from the texture...the low brass show a natural biting texture, especially in the third climax. I am thankful Oue does not rush the climaxes, therefore allowing all the details to be heard, with high woodwinds, high strings, and horns heard clearly...lifting us up into the wild rollercoaster of sound only to be drowned into an abyss after each climatic moment…very atmospheric in recorded sound…as good if not better than the sound of Macal’s M9 on Exton. The raw-like string textures are vivid in the quieter moments, and Oue’s slower tempi keep the tension in the aftermath of the climatic moments. My ONLY quibble is that the timpani do not roll a little longer in the first climax like I heard in Zinman's M9 from Aspen CO. But thats the only quibble.
Barry mentions three basic approaches to the first movement of the M9 that I find very true...here Oue takes the "third approach"...which is "taking all the faster passages slower" rather than contrasting between slow and fast (1st approach) or taking the slower music faster than usual (2nd approach)...as barry mentions in his review of Sinopli's Dresden M9, the 3rd approach creates a "large, single arch, and generally runs 30 minutes or more"...so Oue's approach does remind one of Sinopoli in Dresden here in this recording. The difference between Oue and Sinopoli is that in Sinopoli the third climax is more an anti-climax with softer timpani, and Oue's timpani sound like thunder...and the climax in general is an explosion in sound as mentioned earlier.
The finale is stunning, again the string textures vivid, with attention paid to nuances and atmospheric in tone. And those sections where the horn sings with the strings not as sweet as I’ve heard elsewhere, as in Horenstein’s LSO account on Music and Art’s (1966), but very effective all the same…with a warm tonality. The Zen-like sections thoughtful, again reminiscent of Bernstein with RCO on DG …the moments of agitation rising and flowing naturally, with the tempo not as slow as I thought it would be from looking at the timings beforehand. The slowness comes more at the end, like in Gilbert’s adagio. I am totally happy with how this movement’s progression sounds at one with the proceeding movements…very much a feeling of something lived and experienced and a real thoughtful and penetrating execution of this adagio overall. The overall time is actually 29:40...the applause starts after a good pause.
Lately, Rattle’s BPO has been my commercial recording of choice, but this account by Oue and the NDR is just as powerful and satisfying. Because of Oue’s very slow second movement, I think I still prefer the Rattle for a more conventionally paced choice, but when it’s time to go to the psychotherapist and have a real counseling session to howl, scream and get gushy with emotion…Oue will be up there with Bernstein’s RCO and Boston accounts as my slow M9 of choice!
10/10 rating.
--Todd
Topic: New M9 from Oue/NDR Radio Phil./Exton (Read 8470 times)