Brahms 1: Harnoncourt vs Toscanini

This is a study in contrasts. I could easily have picked another half-dozen conductors for this exercise and called them "polar opposites" in their approach to Brahms. Today, though, we're comparing two examples that I find particularly interesting: Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1951), a classic historical recording, and Harnoncourt with the Berlin Philharmonic (1997), a strikingly modern approach.

On paper, based on my usual tastes in conductors, Harnoncourt's approach shouldn't appeal to me, yet somehow it almost always does. His recordings are never my outright favourites of a particular work, but I appreciate them as an antidote to the countless same-same interpretations that dominate the catalogue. He favours relatively brisk tempos (although in this instance, his Brahms 1 runs for 47 minutes, well within the average range of performance times for the work), and he has a gift for making enormous orchestras sound like nimble chamber ensembles. Here he takes the Berlin Philharmonic—the embodiment of rich, luxuriant string tone during the Karajan era—and transforms them into a lean, hungry, almost scrappy orchestra. However, the playing is disciplined, sharp, energetic, and constantly alive.

Harnoncourt isn't the guy if you're looking for heart-on-sleeve, sweat-flying sentimentality.  But first, countless conductors aim for that sort of emotional excess and fail to get there.  Second, every now and then it's refreshing to have a change of pace and hear entirely different ideas applied to a familiar work. You can always count on Harnoncourt to try something different and to do it well.

Toscanini, by contrast, was one of the true giants of classical music, and this recording makes it immediately obvious why. It's breathless and exhilarating from start to finish. The momentum that sweeps you along for nearly the entire final movement, as the symphony reaches its triumphant conclusion, is virtually unmatched in recordings of this work.  If you want Brahms 1 as "Beethoven's Tenth", a performance that elevates it to sound like a monumental, epoch-defining symphony (which it undoubtedly is), then you can't do better than this performance. 

In rock music, there's the saying about how bands have their entire lives to write their debut album, but only a couple of years to write the follow-up. That's why debut albums by great bands are often their best work, and it also helps explain the infamous "sophomore slump." In classical music, there's no better example of this phenomenon than with Brahms.  He spent twenty years working on it in stages, and didn't finally perform it until he was in his forties.  He intended it to be a legacy-defining work, and keenly felt that it had to be a work to follow in the footsteps of Beethoven and other symphonic masters who had preceded Brahms.  Toscanini delivers the performance that makes good on that anticipation, his performance is a tour de force, and it comes across like a major event.