Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73; Symphony No.
4 in E Minor, Op. 98
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam/Willem Mengelberg
Recorded April 4, 1940 (Symphony No. 2) and November 30, 1938 (Symphony No.
4) — Concertgebouw, Amsterdam
NAXOS Historical 8.110158 [77:38]
There are certain recordings that exist less as documents than as arguments—passionate, unapologetic defenses of an entire aesthetic philosophy. These Mengelberg Brahms performances fall squarely into that category, and Ward Marston’s miraculous transfers for Naxos have given them new life, rescuing them from the sonic murk that plagued earlier Teldec incarnations. The technical achievement alone deserves celebration.
Telefunken’s original shellac pressings—the metal masters long since lost to postwar chaos and neglect—have yielded sound that shouldn’t be possible. Where once there was grinding surface noise and distortion thick enough to obscure whole instrumental lines, Marston has coaxed forth a surprisingly transparent aural picture. The Concertgebouw’s legendary acoustic actually breathes here.
Yes, there’s hiss, a gentle susurration that reminds you these performances date from the eve of the Second World War. But the hiss is uniform, unobtrusive—a small price for such treasures. And treasures they are, though not for the faint of heart or the rhythmically inflexible.
Mengelberg’s Brahms is a provocation. His portamenti slide and swoon with unabashed Romanticism; his tempos shift with the kind of freedom that would give a period-instrument zealot palpitations. The opening of the Fourth Symphony—that movement John Phillips rightly singles out in his original review—moves through tempo modifications that seem almost willful until you surrender to their internal logic.
The first theme’s initial statement has a conversational quality, almost tentative, before the music gathers itself and surges forward with inexorable power. When Mengelberg pulls back for the second theme, the warmth of those Concertgebouw strings (that corporate sound, that blend!) makes the manipulation seem not arbitrary but necessary, even inevitable. This was an players at its absolute peak.
Mengelberg had ruled them with iron discipline since 1895, and by 1938-40 the results of that long collaboration were almost frighteningly assured. Listen to the way the winds enter in the development section of the Second Symphony’s first movement—the oboe’s entrance so perfectly judged, the horn responses so ideally balanced. These are musicians who don’t simply play together; they think together.
The Second Symphony, recorded in April 1940 as Holland teetered on the brink of occupation, has an urgency that transcends style. The "finale" drives forward with almost desperate energy, yet Mengelberg never loses sight of Brahms’s pastoral poetry. Those horn calls in the coda ring out with brazen confidence—defiance, even.
One hears in this execution not just a leader’s interpretive choices but a moment in history, a last flowering before catastrophe. Of course, purists will object. They always do.
You can almost hear the rosin dust settling on the strings.
The freedom with tempo, the unashamed emotionalism, the sheer subjectivity of it all—these run counter to decades of subsequent Brahms interpretation. We’ve been taught to value structural clarity, rhythmic stability, a certain Classical restraint. Mengelberg offers none of these things, or rather, he subordinates them all to a larger expressive goal.
But what expression! The slow movement of the Fourth Symphony unfolds with a long-breathed nobility that makes more “objective” readings seem positively anemic. Mengelberg shapes the Phrygian theme with infinite care, finding gradations of color and dynamic that reveal new dimensions in music we think we know.
When the horns enter with their chorale, the effect is overwhelming—not through volume but through sheer tonal beauty and perfectly judged timing. Telefunken’s engineers deserve their share of credit. They understood that hall, knew how to capture its particular resonance without losing detail or presence.
The fact that they adjusted microphone placement for each individual side—a practice Ward Marston has carefully documented; and compensated for in his equalization—speaks to a level of care that puts many modern sessions to shame. There’s a larger question here, one that goes beyond these specific performances: What do we lose when we abandon this kind of expressive freedom? Not everything Mengelberg does convinces—some of his rallentandos in the Second Symphony’s "scherzo" seem a bit much even to sympathetic ears.
But the alternative, a Brahms stripped of rhetorical gesture and romantic ardor, seems equally problematic. These performances remind us that there are multiple valid approaches to this music, that the search for a single “correct” interpretation is a fool’s errand. At budget price, this disc is essentially essential for anyone interested in twentieth-century conducting traditions or in Brahms performance practice.
It’s also a stunning advertisement for the art of audio restoration—Marston has worked something close to magic here. The sound won’t fool you into thinking these are modern recordings, but it will let — you hear what Mengelberg and — well — his magnificent orchestra were actually doing, and that’s revelation enough. Indispensable, controversial, utterly compelling.
Just don’t expect your grandmother’s Brahms—or rather, do expect exactly that, since this was how an entire generation heard and loved these symphonies. We’ve moved on, perhaps. But we’ve also lost something in the process, and these recordings make that loss palpable.
