You would expect contemporary-music specialist Michael Gielen to excel at Stravinsky, but his performances, while good, have some disappointing moments. Best is the Symphony of Psalms, a performance in which a welcome attention to instrumental detail and beautiful balances between orchestra and chorus combine with finely judged pacing. The result is very compelling, even if the sopranos find the second-movement fugue obviously taxing. The Symphony in C turns out unusually pretty, even gentle, though the orchestra sounds aptly weighty in its loud rhythmic outbursts in the first movement and finale. Still, the music needs less stodgy tempos, more energy, and a keener rhythmic edge with less legato, particularly from the strings. When rehearsing this work with the Cleveland Orchestra in the early 1950s, Stravinsky specifically requested a sharper, more clipped delivery, and that’s exactly what Gielen does not provide.
The Symphony in Three Movements has the most problems in this respect, with a first-movement development section that almost comes to a complete halt. The finale also packs less punch than it should, though the central slow movement once again features excellent textural clarity and no small degree of aural polish. As you might expect from this source, the engineering is fine, and the orchestra plays very well, giving Gielen exactly what he wants; but there are better performances of this music from conductors as diverse as Robert Craft, Michael Tilson Thomas, Georg Solti, Leonard Bernstein, and of course, Stravinsky himself (in some of his best work as a conductor).
