Recording of the Week, Andris Nelsons completes his Bruckner cycle with the Gewandhausorchester

I think it is fair to say that Andris Nelsons's cycle of Bruckner symphonies with the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, which began back in 2017 with the release of the Third Symphony, has been highly praised for its clarity of textures, care over phrasing, and an inexorable sense of forward direction. Indeed, their account of Symphony No. 7 was one of our Top Ten albums of 2018, and I notice that over the years I have written glowingly about many of the series's instalments, which now reaches its conclusion with the release of Symphonies 1 and 5.

Without wishing to repeat myself too much from past reviews, I should note that all of the aspects that I so admired in previous albums are all present and correct here: the warmth of the strings, immensely characterful woodwind playing, and a blazing brass sound at the climaxes. The First Symphony (performed here in the 1890/91 Vienna version) is especially impressive in this regard, with Nelsons ensuring that the string passagework is never buried in the mix, even when the brass are at their strongest. There is a huge amount of detail in the lower strings that comes across pleasingly clearly, not least the rhythmic intricacies of the slow movement, where for example the violas are at one point required to play groups of five notes against twos and threes elsewhere in the strings and woodwind. Even in places such as these with their technical demands, though, Nelsons doesn't allow the music to become robotic or metronomic, shaping each phrase with a remarkable fluidity.

I've always loved the sound of the Leipzig horns, and they are on finest form here: their crisp, almost trombone-like timbre works wonders during the Scherzo of the First Symphony, for instance, cutting through with plenty of bite, and yet elsewhere they mellow their sound when required, blending beautifully with the woodwind in the slow movement. This is an incredibly powerful performance of this First Symphony, and definitely a highlight of the whole cycle.

All of these tonal qualities carry through to the Fifth Symphony, whether it be the extraordinarily quiet yet expressive playing from the strings at the very opening, the full-bodied robustness of the low brass in the first movement's chorale passages, or the plangent sound of solo oboe and bassoon in the slow movement. I often feel that the danger with the Fifth Symphony, above all in the last movement, is that with the not insignificant amount of repeated material there is a risk of losing focus and letting things sag, but here Nelsons manages to achieve the difficult task of keeping the music moving towards its goal whilst simultaneously never sacrificing any of the profundity of the individual moments. The key to this seems to be that he is particularly good at executing long crescendos: this is very effective not only in the slow movement, but crucially also in the last movement, where the pay-off of the final brass chorale is rewardingly cathartic.

One of the hallmarks of Nelsons's cycle has been to complement the Bruckner symphonies with music by Wagner, and this album is no exception, beginning as it does with the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. The flexibility that Nelsons displayed in the Bruckner symphonies continues here, especially in the Prelude which is never rigid or stiff but instead is full of elastic ebb and flow. The opening cello phrase is given plenty of space, and chords are allowed to linger when appropriate, yet later on Nelsons injects just the right level of drive and momentum to see us through to the end without grinding to a halt. It's an alluring opener to a fine pair of performances, which in turn makes for a satisfying conclusion to a splendid series.