Deuxième étape (cf n° 622 pour le Volume 1) de ce qui s'impose comme un des cycles Schumann majeurs des années récentes. Il n'en a pourtant pas manqué, pour des résultats parfois totalement opposés - Venzago versus Dausgaard, par exemple. Une approche volontaire, pensée une nouvelle fois par Heinz Holliger en accordant une confiance totale à l'orchestre schumannien. Mais avec une agilité et une clarté chambristes, une fièvre disciplinée, un allègement général qui dès le Sostenuto assai de la Symphonie n° 2 modifient la perception habituelle.

Ruptures, surprises, exaltations, ivresse: il y a tout cela dans l'Allegro ma non troppo qui s'y enchaîne (on les retrouvera dans l'Allegro molto vivace final). Reposant sur un art des contrastes et une recherche d'équilibre très élaborés, il dégage un paysage sonore plus précis et varié à la fois, plus aéré que dans les gravures « romantiques » usuelles (brahmsiennes, en vérité: la contagion s'est opérée à rebours), créant ainsi une autre poétique. Le Scherzo revient à des origines classiques, allègres, dansantes, l'Adagio espressivo est étranger à tout pathos. On aime le grand geste processionnel auquel certains s'abandonnent ici – Leopold Stokowski, par exemple. Mais on admire tout autant, dans une esthétique et des moyens ô combien éloignés, le dialogue différencié, la légèreté et la fraîcheur que Holliger obtient d'un orchestre très réactif... sans d'ailleurs renoncer à une certaine élégance (la noblesse vraie de la fin du dernier mouvement).

La « Rhénane » confirme ce rééquilibrage au profit des bois, cordes agiles et dégraissées, effectif resserré. Ce n'est plus le Rhin à son plus large et majestueux, mais à sa source, jaillissant, changeant. Les Lebhaft remontent ainsi aux sources du romantisme. Un sourire imprègne le Scherzo (écoutez bien les bois, et l'évidence des équilibres), le Nicht Schnell devient une rêverie intime mais toujours allante. Et la proximité d'approche du Feierlich avec l'Adagio de la Symphonie n° 2 est frappante. Une magnifique réussite.

Rob Cowan reviewed the first volume of Heinz Holliger's Schumann symphony cycle last December and concluded that, as it continued, this 'may well be the one to go for'. Since then, however, we've had sets of the four symphonies (with one or other version of the Fourth) from Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Simon Rattle and Robin Ticciati, joining other recent contenders including Fabio Luisi, Paavo Jarvi and Thomas Dausgaard. If these are indeed blessed times for Schumannistas, the water isn't being made any less muddy.

In the Second, Holliger demurs from the darkness-to-light trajectory divined by Ticciati and perhaps views the work as primarily derived from a Beethovenian aesthetic rather than a Mendelssohnian one, the notable intensity of the opening movement yielding to a businesslike central pair and a finale that feels more episodic than needs be. It's a similar story in the Rhenish: the 'Cologne Cathedral' movement is amply monumental but short on the mystery distilled by Nezet-Seguin or Ticciati, and again the first movement is the best, if not as ideally detailed as other recent readings.

In its favour, this disc is beautifully recorded, the woodwind favoured just a degree over the strings, allowing their solos to sing out. Brass, too, are given their head, which is especially important in both these works. The WDR SO is a full-size Romantic orchestra with slightly reduced strings for these performances, as opposed to the chamber bands that are increasingly claiming this music as their own; so the direct comparison is to Rattle, sumptuous-sounding if hampered by certain mannerisms, as against Holliger's coolness. You pays your money and you takes your choice: Holliger's cycle will ultimately be on three full-price SACDs, whereas many of the smaller-scale (and commensurately more athletic) performances come in handily priced two-disc slimline packs. Regular readers will already know where my preferences lie.

As an instrumentalist (oboe) Holliger’s Schumann discography dates back to 1981. In the role of conductor here, he’s scaled the orchestra back to a size which the composer would have known, in order to refute the old canard about opaque scoring in the four symphonies (this Audite cycle will include both versions of No. 4). The ‘Rhenish’ is marginally the stronger performance, as there’s more tenderness in No. 2 than Holliger acknowledges. His positive manner is to secure incisive, clean playing from all departments and to drive the music forwards (not at unreasonable speeds) with no fussy ‘interventionism’.

These terrific new performances are full of so many fine things and should provide an ideal choice of recording for these works. The recordings made in the Philharmonie, Köln are absolutely first class and add so much to the clarity of detail.

With excellent booklet notes this new release must receive the strongest recommendation.

These are highly attractive readings in a series that holds considerable promise and is well on the way to fulfilling it.

Heinz Holliger's cycle of Schumann's symphonic works continues in Volume 2 (the first was reviewed in January) with Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3, preserving the rather Iighter approach he cultivates compared with that of many distinguished interpreters. There is much to be said for this. In the first place, it confronts head-on the charge of Schumann's poor orchestration, which continues to dog him. It is an ancient one, going back at least to Mahler, whose own beutifully lucid orchestration is in the line of Weber and Berlioz rather than what Schumann had in mind (those who want to hear what Mahler did for, or to, Schumann, may be interested in Riccardo Chailly's set of the symphonies). Perhaps Schumann's orchestration really did seem of 'incredible clumsiness' to the original conductor of the first two symphonies, Mendelssohn, as Donald Tovey surmises in the course of several paragraphs in his essay on the First Symphony, referring to listeners who have 'tried to hear Schumann's orchestra in its native fog'. But Schumann had an orchestra with a substantially smaller body of strings, and time and again it has been shown, as by John EIiot Gardiner, that a conductor following this practice, and with a careful ear to balance, can make Schumann's orchestra sound as if it is doing the job of presenting the musical ideas well, which is its purpose. Hans Gál, in many ways the successor to Tovey as Edinburgh's musical sage, and a man with deep understanding of the German musical tradition, wrote of the opening of the Third Symphony that, 'the conductor has to keep a thick quilt of harmony, that covers and dampens the soaring tune, under strict control, and let the melody flow with a large phrasing, free from narrow bar accents to give it the sweeping swing it demands'.

This kind of scrupulousness guides Holliger's performances, together with a naturally light touch in style that suits the works well, and does not treat them as if Brahms had already arrived upon the German scene. He does not take the opening of the Second Symphony too majestically, playing it quite brightly, which suits a movement in which the themes are not developmental but dangerously repetitious. The Scherzo is played swiftly, but with a certain eeriness in the main scherzo, which expresses it well: the swift, apparently dancing theme is actually based on a discord (the ubiquitous Romantic chord of spookiness, the diminished seventh), and the more lyrical elements must lie, as in this performance, with the two Trios which Schumann provides as its counter. The Adagio is marked by length of melodic line in the wind, led by a beautifully played oboe (as no doubt Holliger, one of the great oboists of his time, would have appreciated). Both with this Symphony's finale and that of the other Symphony here, the 'Rhenish', matters are kept bright and quite swift-moving, no attempt being made at a grand climatic summing up.

The Rhine Symphony itself is vividly presented, with the Ländler of the second movement absorbed into the work's Iyrical elements, as is suggested by the movement's intricate treatment of it, rather than played as a splash of local colour; and the movement, really an interlude, is gracefully and elegantly handled. The are problems for the interpreter in the fourth movement, marked feierlich ('solemn' or 'ceremonial'), with its subtle invocations (as Gál again points out) of the length of tradition manifest in the Rhine's great cathedral at Cologne, with motives that have ecclesiastical associations and even of Bach himself, no Rhinelander but a figure in whose shadow so much stood.

These are intelligent interpretations, decently recorded, original but drawing their nature from what lies to be found in the music itself.

Zusammen mit dem WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln zaubert der Dirigent Heinz Holliger schillernde Farben aus der Partitur von Robert Schumann hervor - unsere CD der Woche.

Sendebeleg siehe PDF!

Japanische Rezension siehe PDF!

Die Folgen 2 und 3 der neuen Gesamteinspielung sämtlicher sinfonischer Werke Robert Schumanns setzt die mit der ersten CD begonnene Interpretationslinie konsequent fort. Hier entsteht eine Reihe von Aufnahmen, die einen sicherlich sehr individuellen, in gewisser Weise auch modernen, vor allem aber künstlerisch sehr wertvollen Beitrag zur Schumann- Diskografie leistet. Man darf jetzt schon auf das nächste Produkt dieser Serie gespannt sein!