[TR24][OF] Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2, Tragic Overture, Academic Festival Overture - Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván (Ivan) Fischer - 2014 (Classical)

Symphony No.2 in D Major, Op. 73
01. I. Allegro non troppo (20:13)
02. II. Adagio non troppo (9:09)
03. III. Allegretto grazioso (5:43)
04. IV. Presto ma non assai (9:44)
Tragic Overture in D minor, Op. 81
05. Tragic Overture in D minor (13:01)
Academic Festival Overture in C Minor, Op. 80
06. Academic Festival Overture in C Minor (10:32)

A remarkable, transparent purity can be heard in Brahms’s Second symphony. It is a sharp contrast to the huge arsenal of ideas collected in the First Symphony, which Brahms had worked on for many years. Here in his Second he shows us his masterful skill in developing large-scale architecture from the simplest motifs. To give the first of these to the horns is a logical choice; Brahms always used natural horns and resisted the more modern instruments. Horns can ideally explore the purest of all musical ideas: the journey through the overtones.
Similar purity is present in all the themes. When at the start the basses step down a semitone and step back again, nobody could guess what a rich new world would develop from this cell. The last movement is also built on a simple tool: repeated, equal notes follow each other in regimental order (a classical tradition often heard in final movements by Haydn or Mozart). Is this Brahms’s most nature-related symphony? Considering the complicated organisms that develop from the simplest cells, yes, it is. Brahms certainly has the divine, creative talent to show us how this process can work in music. --Iván Fischer
“indeed Fischer and his players seem content to let the untroubled optimism of the symphony shine through...The six-minute scherzo, often likened with some justification to Schubert, is a particular delight...Fischer’s brass are, once again, on top-notch form here – neither too timid nor too ostentatiously forceful.” --Presto Classical
“Who needs another Brahms Second Symphony? Well, after Iván Fischer’s exhilarating Brahms No 1, we can all benefit from the intense freshness and lyricism that his Budapest forces bring to this music, along with their roots in eastern Europe...Fischer is superb at clarifying the textures.” --The Observer
“it is even more integrated in thematic structure than the First, and it is that balance between detailed focus and spontaneity that Ivan Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra strike so convincingly here. Fischer's moderate speeds ensure that his subtle tempo modifications always sound natural.” --BBC Music Magazin
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer, conductor
Palace of Arts, Budapest, February 2012