Schmidt: Symphony No. 4 / Strauss: Symphonic Fragment 'Josephs-Legende'
In this repertory, the standard was set by Zubin Mehta, whose passionate1971 account of the Fourth Symphonywith the Vienna Philharmonic (Schmidt's own orchestra, in which he played the cello) still stands head-and-shoulders above both of these newcomers in its forcefulness and rhetorical intensity. But Jarvi at least gets into the sound of the piece, conveying both the urgency and the sweep of Schmidt's argument. He also does a more satisfactory job of building climaxes and illuminating the score's extraordinary monothematic architecture. His Detroit brass are far more willing to step up to the hard parts than their London counterparts are, too. No wimps in the Motor City. As we have come to expect from Chandos, which here completes its survey of the Schmidt symphonies under Jarvi, the louder passages suffer a little from boominess; otherwise, the recording is admirably detailed and has a great deal of impact. Jarvi does a crackerjack job with the filler, Richard Strauss's Josephs-Legende, achieving more with this fragment than Kempe and the Dresden Staatskapelle did.--Ted Libbey