Following up on Karl Miller's review of the new recording of Bruno
Walter's Symphony, here's my review at Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001I3GCSM/classicalnet:

Most of us of a certain age remember Bruno Walter as the genial
conductor of some of the most important Columbia discs of the 1950s.
He, of course, had been a protege of Mahler and as a young man had given
premieres of some of his works (e.g.  Das Lied von der Erde and the Ninth
Symphony).  Early on he had intended to be a composer/conductor like his
mentor.  And he wrote two symphonies, this recording of the First being
only the second performance of it since its premiere in 1907.  But he
gave up on composing shortly thereafter.  He had shown this symphony to
Mahler who had a tepid reaction to it and later wrote 'Unfortunately,
it means nothing to me, and my frank opinion put him [Walter] in a state
of mild despair.' I think Mahler was on to something.  Although this
work -- nearly an hour long -- has some moments, it strikes me as awkwardly
written, with tortured counterpoint, undistinguished thematic material,
and in the first two movements at least an atmosphere of unrelieved murky
gloom.  It does, of course, partake of those expressionistic elements
characteristic of the emerging Second Viennese School and probably is
closest in effect to that of the music of Berg.  Still, one can think
of marvelous works by such composers as Berg, Zemlinsky, and early
Schoenberg that leave it in the dust.

The first movement, nearly twenty minutes long, is a crushingly angst-ridden
muddle.  The second movement, an adagio, is almost as long and its manner
is even more crepuscular.  The scherzo is a sardonic waltz whose manner
comes closest to that of Mahler and it is actually my favorite of the
four movements.  The finale puts us back again in the tortured nighttime
but it does conclude with a bang-up finish. I suppose one could compare
this symphony with Mahler's Seventh, the popularly-called 'Song of the
Night', but it comes nowhere near having that admittedly difficult
symphony's power.

The performance by the adventurous conductor, Leon Botstein, and the
NDR Symphony does at times sound a bit tentative and indeed, since this
symphony has no performance history over the last ninety years, this is
not a big surprise.  Still, this is the only game in town and if you are
interested to hear music written by this giant conductor, this CD would
have to be it.  I applaud the cpo label for bringing us music by otherwise
unheard conductor/composers -- one immediately thinks of the music of
Felix Weingartner they've have brought out -- but I'm not terribly high
on this particular one.

Scott Morrison

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