Johannes Brahms
Symphony No 1 in C Minor Opus 68
Variations on a Theme by Haydn Opus 56a
Hungarian Dance No 14 (arr. Fischer)
Ivan Fischer conducting the Budapest Festival Orchestra
Review By Phil Gold
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  For those bemoaning the relative lack of fine new recordings of large-scale orchestral works on SACD, here's a vote of thanks to Channel Classics Records. This Dutch company, under the direction of C. Jared Sacks, has already released 130 hybrid SACDs, including several I have greatly enjoyed, such as Piazzolla — le Grand Tango with the Katona Twins [CCS SA 19804]and Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and Haydn Concertos with Rachel Podger [CCS SA 29309]. What has distinguished these recordings is the marriage of superlative sound to first rate music making.

Can Channel Classics extend this success into such large scale works as Brahms First Symphony? I am delighted to say that not only have they done so, but the benefit of top-class SACD recording has never brought so much to the table. I always enjoyed the DSD layer better than the Redbook layer on the earlier, smaller scale performances, but the differences are overwhelming here. What I'd like to do is to lock all those skeptics who say SACD is very little better than CD into a room with an amplifier and speakers of their own choice, and a state of the art SACD player like the EMM Labs XSD1 and this disk. I guarantee they will eat their words. The advantages are so great one could almost believe Channel Classics deliberately sabotaged the Redbook layer, except that this Redbook layer sounds as good as pretty much any CD you can name. The SACD layer is so much more open, relaxed, detailed, musical and enjoyable, just like real music.

The absolutely silent background allows us to experience the fine acoustics of the Palace of the Arts in Budapest. The Budapest Festival orchestra which Ivan Fischer co-founded and directs is as colorful a band as I have experienced. Special kudos go to the lower strings and the electrifying brass. It is difficult to pigeonhole Mr Fischer, but he reminds me of both Bruno Walter and Istvan Kertesz in his responsiveness to the temperature of the music and his ability to make the orchestra speak with a single voice.

If the Hungarian Dance is a delicious appetizer, the Variations on a Theme by Haydn is a splendid main course, noble, lyrical and carefully textured. So far, so good, but neither prepares you for what comes next. This performance of the Brahms First simply beggars belief. I kept waiting for the orchestra to stumble, for the intensity to slacken, for an ill shaped phrase or something for me to point at and say "aha — the Concertgebouw would not do this" or "Giulini would do better here."

It didn't happen. Despite this being an orchestra I have never heard before, with a conductor I'm-equally unfamiliar with, these guys have nailed it and the Channel Classics team have captured the sessions so faithfully you are left with nothing but Brahms, and that Brahms is overwhelming. It had me air conducting and singing, then playing the damn disk over and over. I lent the disk to some discerning friends and they felt the same way, so if I'm wrong I'm in good company. Fischer has chosen his tempi judiciously, slow enough to reveal massive amounts of delicious detail but not slow enough for the pace to drag. The tension builds inexorably in the magnificent fourth movement, where we almost hear the familiar strains of the "Ode to Joy" which led some to call this Beethoven's Tenth. Fischer points up other references in the Brahms score to the Choral Symphony which makes me anxious to hear him in that work too. The orchestral playing is top notch across the board, and my chief regret is that I wasn't there in the Palace of the Arts to witness the recording sessions. Thanks to Channel Classics and a high-resolution recording, we get the next best thing.

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