Claudio Abbado's live album of Robert Schumann's music with the Orchestra Mozart is a curious diversion from the ensemble's ongoing series of Mozart recordings, though it shows a willingness to explore other repertoire that is less predictable for them. At first blush, the Symphony No. 2 in C major and the overtures Manfred and Genoveva might seem well-suited to the group's warm tone and rich blend, though the combination of their tonal coloration with Schumann's thick orchestration tends to make textures rather heavy and ...
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Claudio Abbado's live album of Robert Schumann's music with the Orchestra Mozart is a curious diversion from the ensemble's ongoing series of Mozart recordings, though it shows a willingness to explore other repertoire that is less predictable for them. At first blush, the Symphony No. 2 in C major and the overtures Manfred and Genoveva might seem well-suited to the group's warm tone and rich blend, though the combination of their tonal coloration with Schumann's thick orchestration tends to make textures rather heavy and homogenous sounding. There are, of course, ways to adjust orchestral sections through subtle changes in the dynamics and to make some of Schumann's notorious doublings of woodwinds and strings less egregious, but Abbado seems to have kept strictly to the scores and ignored these issues. As a result, this is pretty much ordinary, unreconstructed Schumann, and there is no attempt to clarify inner lines or to make the Second Symphony lighter, clearer, or leaner, as it might sound in the...
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