In the early digital era, fans of central European late Romantic orchestral music were given for the first time in recorded history an actual choice of recordings of the three symphonies of Max Bruch: those by Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on Philips and these by James Conlon and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln on EMI. At the time, most listeners assumed that Masur and the Leipzig orchestra had a lock on the works; they were, after all, the pre-eminent representatives of East German music-making and if they ...
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In the early digital era, fans of central European late Romantic orchestral music were given for the first time in recorded history an actual choice of recordings of the three symphonies of Max Bruch: those by Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on Philips and these by James Conlon and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln on EMI. At the time, most listeners assumed that Masur and the Leipzig orchestra had a lock on the works; they were, after all, the pre-eminent representatives of East German music-making and if they couldn't make Bruch's scores come alive, who could? But as time proved, Masur and his Leipzig orchestra were only able to turn in warm-hearted, well-played but essentially generic accounts of the works that did nothing to elevate their status in the repertoire. But Conlon and his Cologne orchestra turn in not only warm-hearted, well-played accounts but strongly profiled readings that made the works seem much more successful and important than Masur and his crew. Here, Bruch sounds...
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