It is not often I take any notice of reviews on Amazon, but the three I found of this new release were not full of praise. They accuse Nézet-Séguin’s Schumann of being “shallow”, too fast, and devoid of the “expression” that these listeners were used to from Bernstein’s late recordings or (for less extreme examples) Kubelik and Sawallisch. In other words, Nézet-Séguin discarded the interpretive signposts that this music has picked up over 150 years of performance practice. 

Personally, I never learned to love Schumann’s symphonies until I heard the recordings by Neville Marriner (with the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra) – a conductor who knows something about clarification of texture. Later, original instrument readings from Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique proved a further revelation. It seems to me unfair that Schumann should be expected to provide depth and sorrowful resonance in every note – his symphonies were written mostly when the composer was in a bracingly good mood. 

This set is played on modern instruments by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, renowned for their ensemble and bright clarity. They are conducted by the young Canadian (chief conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2010), who is very well aware of what to include and what to leave out. The First Symphony (Spring) begins with an unexpectedly broad introduction, but once the allegro gets underway it scampers, sylph-like, and with genuine sparkle. 

Nézet-Séguin clearly feels Schumann’s rhythms (like Brahms’s) are better treated lightly. It is not that he does not inflect this music at all. In the final movement of No 1 he puts inverted commas around an important thematic statement, and in the scherzo of No 2 he allows the woodwinds their usual rubato; the difference is these things are in scale. It is nice to hear the slow movement of No 4 played as a serenade rather than a lament, while the first movement is too full of energy and drive to get bogged down in Schumann’s repetitive rhythms.

Symphony No 3 (the Rhenish) proves the weakest performance. Of the four symphonies, this one most requires a touch of grandeur. It is partly the fault of the recording: timpani do not have enough presence to underline the fortes. Here (and in parts of No 1) I yearned for a few more violins to add heft to the string lines. Even so, the second, third and fifth movements are delightfully fresh. Overall,
this is joyous music-making.