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Georg Tintner, CM (22 May 1917–2 October 1999) was an Austrian conductor whose career was principally in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. Although best known as a conductor, he was also a composer (he considered himself a composer who conducted). Järvi offers an extremely beautiful performance, responsively played and, most crucially, sensitive to key transitions. There are many subtleties, while the finale’s angrily strutting second set will have your woofers quaking. Incidentally, in Järvi’s Adagio those hymn-like string chords are mightily sonorous and the no-holds-barred climax – with percussion this time – is extremely effective though the ritardando 'in' is perhaps a mite excessive. Future installments of Tintner's cycle, I gather, will include some relative rarities, such as William Carragan's edition of the 1872 (first) version of the 2 nd, currently only available in the Camerata set under Eichhorn. Ultimately, I would not claim that this is a performance to displace the classic accounts of the work – Furtwängler (1942), Georg Ludwig Jochum (1944), Eugen Jochum (1958), Konwitschny (1961), Schuricht (1963), Horenstein (1971), to name just a few I should hate to live without – but they are mainly in dated or less-than-perfect sound. The only truly great Fifth I know of in first class modern sound is by Takashi Asahina on a very expensive Japanese import disc.
Claudio Abbado, VPO. Decca. I haven't heard his DG remake with the same orchestra, but this is the version I got to know this puzzlingly neglected symphony. He paces this performance with an extreme sureness of step; in fact it builds inevitably from the plodding downward tread of the opening double bass line, to the magnificent culmination of the finale. The eighth is another magnificent work. Of the Haas edition, Karajan’s third and last 1988 recording with the VPO, shortly before his death, is a fine one to own. Wand’s recording in 2001 is equally as thrilling a swansong, full of humility and humanity. As far as the Nowak version is concerned, Horenstein’s 1955 recording for Vox takes some beating. Of a more specialist interest is a 1972 recording made by William Steinberg with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It’s a good, well paced and powerful reading, well played by the Bostonians, and as this under-rated conductor didn’t record the Eighth commercially it’s good to have this available. Unfortunately, however, it’s only very expensively available at present in the BSO’s Symphony Hall Centennial Celebration boxed set, available direct from the BSO. Early in October, conductor Georg Tintner died from injuries sustained in a fall from the eleventh story of his Nova Scotia home. Although this information has not been confirmed by Naxos, Tintner, 82 at the time, reportedly had been suffering from terminal cancer, and jumped from the balcony of his home rather than suffer the pain and disorientation associated with his disease and its treatment.No. 6: Staatskapelle Dresden and Eugene Jochum (one of the highlights in this set which is a little uneven in my opinion).
The second symphony is in the same key as the first, though slightly darker. The 1872 version has Tintner’s wonderful recording on Naxos to recommend it. If you are wedded to Haas then Haitink’s 1966 recording is excellent (but strangely,of the symphonies, this is still not available as part of the Philips Duo series, which means one has to turn to the box- set). Wand’s 1981 version with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra is not quite as convincing. If Haas is not an issue then Guilini’s recording with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (1974) available on Testament, is without doubt a firm recommendation. I think Jochum is fine for at least the first three; I enjoy the old Walter/Columbia Sym. for the Fourth most, the Fifth is excellent (as Lance stated) with Knappertsbusch VPO (and the cymbals at the end!), Klemperer hands down for the Sixth, and the Seventh with Tintner or Böhm is wonderful. The Eighth again with Jochum, but I haven't heard Tintner's. I also still love Bruno Walter for the Ninth.The seventh is quite simply a marvellous work, containing some of the sunniest and darkest of the composers emotions. (It rather reminds me in some ways of the insanity of Schumann’s second). For the seventh there are many recommendations. Tintner’s 1996 is the obvious bargain choice, a superb recording all round. The only recording that comes close to challenging it is Gunter Wand’s 1999 recording. This is an impressive recording characterised by long phrases with a splendidly paced finale. I recently acquired an older recording of Harnoncourt conducting the 7th with again, the Wiener Philharmoniker, onm Teldec and enjoyed it a great deal. I was very happy with how he shaped the overall line of the piece, yet not abandoning tiny details, and that rhythmic drive, oh man! Klemperer,New Philharmonia,EMI. The version I learned this great symphony on, and I became so accustomed to its very broad tempi other performances sounded too fast to me, but I've since gotten accustomed to them.
I think Karajan is tops in the seventh, and while I like his VPO recording on DG, my preference is again for the one on EMI with the BPO. By now it will be fairly obvious that Järvi’s Seventh is the more convincing; but Norrington’s sense of daring, his energy and conviction, and the way he inspires his players to focus exactly the performance he wants has a huge appeal. In a sense what we have here are two quite different symphonies, and the great virtue of Norrington’s is that no one knows it – yet. I agree that the BPO does a wonderful job in the fourth, but I would go with the Jocum/DG and Karajan/EMI recordings that they made. I prefer the former for a more aggressive approach, and the latter is IMO better than the Bohm/VPO recording for something a bit slower and more reverential in approach. Abbado’s reading of the vast first movement is in time but not entirely of it. On occasion the pulse hangs by a thread. Yet it is a thread that never breaks, like a life that has peaks yet to climb before it makes its quietus.Thielemann should be mentioned for the exceptional Fifth he recorded, absolutely one of the finest available. Now, that's nothing to sneeze at ! (Is this a take-off on the Cologne (Köln) "Gürzenich" Orchestra?) He spent a year with the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra (1966–67) and three years with Sadler's Wells Opera (1967–70) before returning to Australia as music director of the West Australian Opera. In 1974, he rejoined the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera, by then known as the Australian Opera. He became music director of the Queensland Theatre Orchestra in 1976. Wildner’s conviction is immediately apparent in the first movement: Listen as he builds the opening’s two great climaxes with arresting force, then infuses the following lyrical second subject with an ingratiating warmth. Fine as the first movement is, it’s actually the Adagio and Finale that benefit most from Wildner’s probing conducting, as both movements sound with a rare formal coherence married to dramatic impact. As a bonus, the first disc of this double set also includes the composer’s intermediate version (1876) of the Adagio.
Georg Tintner conducting the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, 1996 (using a pre-publ. Carragan ed.), Naxos In short, while those earlier Columbia recordings have been superseded by later digital renderings, they remain on my playlist as pioneering efforts with superb musicianship and excellent sound for the day that stands up well against their digital counterparts. Franz Konwitschny conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, live recording, 1951, Berlin Classics Giulini,VPO,DG. I've been bothered by the excessively slow tempi in this conductor's late performances, but they work in the 9th.I'm least familiar with 5 but rather like Wand/NDRSO and posting this reminds me that I'm overdue for another go, perhaps with Skrowaczewski/SRSO this time, which I don't think I've heard since shortly after I bought it! 6--Horst Stein & the WP; 7--HvK BP or WP; 8-HvK/WP (Boulez is overdue for re-evaluation, however); 9--Giulini/WP. Every few years, it would appear, another great septuagenarian or even octogenarian conductor suddenly pops up as if from nowhere to impress us with his grasp of the great Austro-German symphonic repertoire. I was listening to his Tchaikovsky's 4th the other night actually, with the very same band...seems he only recorded with the Gezundheit Orchestra when he knew it was being recorded for live broadcast... The violin solo ... in duple quarters and duple eighths, ... together with the rhythmic complexities already caused by the shift from sextuplets to quintuplets in the first violins, ... must have created an amazingly detailed sound – not to say an impenetrable musical fog." [7] In the coda, the solo horn, which was considered unplayable by the horn-player, was replaced by the first clarinet and the viola section. I could go on and on, but you have by now figured out that this is another Naxos masterpiece. Once more we are indebted to Klaus Heymann for providing us with a masterly recording. At the price, it would be sin to not buy to this disc.
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