[Nicolai P. Zwar]

There are sometimes moments that brand themselves into your memory. One of mine happened in the classical section of Tower Records in Northridge, back when a visit to a record store could still feel like a visit to the Undiscovered Country, because you never knew what was new, what to find. I was browsing the selections when something over the speakers immediately spoke to me. A sound that felt both ancient and immediate. I listened, waited, tried to place it. I asked at the store, and it turned out to be Brahms’ 4th, the then brand new Abbado recording with the Berlin Philharmonic. I stayed in store for the entire thing, standing between the shelves, browsing, listening… at least I didn’t mind spending an hour in a record store, there was lots to browse too. Anyway, that’s still one of my all time favorite classical recordings of one of my all time favorite symphonies.

Over the years, of course, additional recordings joined the ranks… I’ve got Chailly, Karajan, Böhm, Kleiber, Giulini, each one a different lens on the same granite monument. And because I’m apparently incapable of resisting a “too good not to go for it” sale, last year I added yet another set: Gardiner’s new cycle with the Royal Concertgebouw, in a pristine 24bit/192kHz download from Deutsche Grammophon. Yesterday I finally sat down with it, naturally starting with the Fourth.

The first impression was… uncertain. Underpowered. A little brittle. Less sweep, more bone. Should I go back to the Abbado? Or Kleiber… but the longer I listened, the more I allowed myself to settle into this sound and this approach, the more it pulled me in. Details shifted. Familiar passages refracted differently. It was like someone had opened yet another window in a room I thought I knew by heart.

Coming back to a beloved symphony through a new recording is like returning to a favorite garden in a new spring. The lake, the trees, the hills, yes, they are all still there. But the colors, the light, the wind, the small living things that animate the place, the flowers, the butterflies, the ducks… those change, those are new. And suddenly the familiar becomes unfamiliar in the best possible way. That is how I hear music, that is how I see music, and that is why I dislike the idea of “the one definitive recording.”. That’s like King Haggard locking up all the Unicorns because he loved their beauty, thereby destroying it. Music isn’t a fossil to put under a glas. It breathes. It shimmers. It refuses to be locked into a single set of bits and bytes. And I feel very passionate about it.

Granted, most film scores aren’t Brahms, I certainly concede that, and you don’t need a dozen recordings of JAWS to get the point, it doesn’t need that kind of scrutiny. But two? Hell, yeah. That McNeely recording makes me hear completely different details than the film tracks by John Williams. And if Dudamel would record another complete JAWS with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, you bet I’m first in line to get that recording as well. (Or any of the projects suggested by the Tall Guy.)