Dvorak: Symphony No. 9, Copland: Billy the Kid

A brand-new label showcasing both the National Symphony Orchestra and their home – the Kennedy Center – in Washington DC offers two familiar postcards ‘From the New World’ in performances that should but don’t stand out from the crowd. The venue sounds well enough in what is clearly a well-engineered disc and the inimitable chord spacings that open Copland’s Billy the Kid Suite certainly convey that sense of ‘tall, wide and handsome’ – a sense that, notwithstanding the Godfather of American music Charles Ives, the American orchestral sound essentially began here.

But the open, rather too well-homogenised (for my taste) sound picture contributes to a presentation of this music that, while slickly projected by the NSO and its music director Gianandrea Noseda, is somehow too urbane to be entirely in keeping with its frontier spirit, its homespun local colour, Mexican dances and the like. It feels and sounds like a rather expensive 21st-century pageant – a depiction of the famous outlaw and his milieu that heaven forbid should get down and dirty.

As we move into Dvo?ák’s celebrated letter home from North America, it becomes more and more apparent to me that part of the reason why Noseda’s reading feels overly generalised and short on personality is a sound picture that favours blend over detail. Rich and sonorous as it is, the whole thing is lacking litheness and rhythmic profile. I want to hear more definition in the brass, a sharper immediacy to the horns and trombones especially, and trumpets that really cut through the texture. Their exciting ‘hairpins’ in the coda of the first movement go for absolutely nothing.

But it’s not just the sound that’s the issue here. In a piece this familiar it’s those ‘personal’ touches that make it live and breathe again, and in this slow movement one feels like one is standing back in admiration of the super-smooth brass chorale and well-upholstered cor anglais solo rather than being drawn afresh into the musical narrative. The middle section of this movement can and should tug at the heartstrings, as should the use of solo strings at the close. But it remains strangely impassive.

Again there is fire and resilience in the finale but little of the excitement it can muster. Both sonically and interpretatively I feel like I am at arm’s length from everything. How much more exciting the harmonic interaction of trumpets against trombones against tremolando violins in the coda would be if there were not just more immediacy but a very real sense of the music over-reaching itself. These are respectable performances for a respectable audience but nothing whatever to frighten the horses.

A live production invariably brings so much more emotional thrill that it largely outweighs any imperfection it may entail; in this particular case the positive tension between audience and musicians is tangible, and the more I listen the more I like it.

It may be clear that from the luxury of available versions, which by the way and for various reasons do not all come into prime focus, it may be difficult to make up one’s mind. That said, Noseda and his forces surely are in the top league. And with a compelling Billy the Kid Suite from Aaron Copland’s complete ballet, plus on top of that an exemplary sound, with modest but effective surround, one can hardly go wrong when opting for Gianandrea Noseda and the National Symphony Orchestra.