Listening to Douglas Bostock conduct the opening of Nielsen’s Third Symphony is like watching a clumsy runner struggling to regain his footing. His hasty accelerando over the powerful repeated chords leads to a main tempo that is apparently too fast for the orchestra to negotiate successfully. Consequently, the remainder of the movement is riddled with blurred articulation, hesitant entrances and insecure rhythms. The slow movement comes as a relief for the beleaguered musicians, and the recording interestingly (if unnecessarily) includes an alternative scoring of this movement without the soloists. Otherwise it, like the performance of the last two movements, is really nothing special: merely efficient where the competition is outstanding. What is special are the remaining items on this disc: two of Nielsen’s rarely heard songs, beautifully sung and knowingly interpreted by Jan Lund and Eva Hess Thaysen; and the Paraphrase on Nearer my God to Thee, composed in memory of those who perished in the sinking of the Titanic. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic redeems itself in this work, and in the lively Helios overture. The recorded sound in the symphony reveals an empty room with hard reflecting surfaces.
