Brainwave Symphony CD 4

Beethoven: “Egmont” Overture; Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor op. 98 –
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Rene Leibowitz (Beethoven); Fritz Reiner (Brahms)
Classical | 1 CD | EAC Rip | 229 MB | FLAC+LOG+Cue | Full scans | RS links
Publisher: Chesky Records

Editorial Reviews- Amazon.com
Noted podium tyrant and sadist Fritz Reiner must have scared the daylights out of the Royal Philharmonic, which plays this music as though their very lives depended on it. This is one of the great Brahms Fourth Symphonies, a performance of eruptive force and barely contained fury. It's been superbly transferred to CD, and anyone who loves this symphony simply has to own this recording. No question about it. –David Hurwitz

A very rare CD of a wonderful label Russian Disc with one of the Shostakovich most remarkable symphony - No.4, performed by Gennady Rozhdestvensky with the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra.

If you can get past the 1940s monaural sound (and if you are not already familiar with this performance, you will get a shock). This is the gentlest, most right sounding rendition I have ever heard. The tempi are uncommonly brisk, though they never sound that way. The third movement has never sounded more beautiful. Halban is perfect in the finale. Walter passed away before he could record this work in stereo. His later performances were very different and I'm still not sure whether or not his later slower tempos and even greater expression were an improvement.

Finnish composer Kalevi Aho’s Fourth Symphony (1972) contains, in its three movements, elements both typical of his early work and prophetic of things to come. The first movement’s fugal exposition reveals a continuation of that concern with musical shape and form already quite evident in Aho’s previous symphonies. His skillful use of counterpoint to convey an impression of sadness or dread echoes that great master of creepy fugue writing, Bartók. The second movement unleashes a violent whirlwind of sound very much in the spirit of Mahler’s or Shostakovich’s more nihilistic moments, and its instrumental virtuosity very much anticipates the composer’s most recent, concertante-style symphonic writing.

Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev (1856-1915) is an exceptional figure in 19th-century Russian music. He had nothing in common with the Russian National School. Taneyev's abstract approach to composing was in stark contrast to the outbursts of emotion that we encounter in many of his contemporaries. People tend to call him the Russian Brahms, were it not for Taneyev's disapproval of his music. Taneyev was a composition student of Tchaikovsky and, as a pianist, provided the premieres of Tchaikovsky's works for piano and orchestra. A close friendship developed between the two, which would last until Tchaikovsky's death, despite the sincerity with which Taneyev was one of the few in the Tchaikovsky area to dare to criticize his work.