It’s admirable that Colin Davis is tackling new repertoire late in his career, particularly since his remakes of the music most closely associated with him (Sibelius and Berlioz especially) have not been as good as his earlier versions. Unfortunately, this release is a mixed bag. Davis tears into the Fourth Symphony at a blistering pace, and the first movement is incredibly exciting. At just a hair over 31 minutes, this has to be the quickest modern performance on disc, and it begs the question of what Davis will do to make the final apotheosis more satisfying than the climactic appearances of the symphony’s motto theme in the first movement. The answer: nothing. He races to the finish as if he really doesn’t believe in Nielsen’s happy ending, and the sonics balance the strings weakly. It’s a shame really, because otherwise this lickety-split performance has a lot going for it.
The Fifth Symphony is even more problematic. The first movement really drags: its opening sounds aimless, and Nielsen’s “hostile forces” lack menace. The Adagio section is really slow, and while the snare drummer is clearly in front of a microphone, the climax fails to build with anything like the necessary intensity. The second movement opens with full guns blazing, but once again there’s a general lack of power to the climaxes (especially in the quick first fugue) despite better sonics that capture the strings really digging into their parts. In the very last bar, Davis, who otherwise uses the new critical edition, ignores the ties in the brass and strings and stops the orchestra dead before the last chord–a bizarre and wholly misguided effect. There was a lot of potential here, but in the end the result is simply strange.
