Ferdinand Ries symphonies - new recordings

[eschiss1]

The Tapiola Sinfonietta has been posting to YouTube recordings of some of the 8 symphonies by Beethoven's (piano) pupil Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838), whose complete symphonies have been recorded once, on cpo.
presto announces that May 3 will see the release of a new intended Ries cycle on Ondine from Janne Nisonen and the above mentioned Tapiola Sinfonietta. (Ondine describes the recording as first in a new cycle.)

[Alan Howe]

From what I can hear of the excerpts at Presto, these will be extremely swift performances - I'm tempted to say possibly too swift...

[eschiss1]

Total durations are almost the same (26:03/26:33 on Ondine, 26:37/25:26 on cpo) with some greater variations in reported durations of individual movements.

Their video of sym.4 is a minute slower than Griffiths, which may include pauses and applauses, haven't checked... edit: the performance starts at 34 seconds in, after applause, yes-the movements are given with internal timings under the video. "Available until 11 March 2025"- so perhaps the new commercial release is in process

[eschiss1]

ah, and their sym 4 ends at 32:09 (5:46 finale, rather briefer than Griffiths' 6:07.)

[Alan Howe]

I'm sure this is good for those who have never picked up the cpo recordings, but the latter are very fine, so I won't be tempted into any duplication here. Still, this is an enterprising project.

[kolaboy]

I'm good with my cpo's.

[Ilja]

I like those too, but I'm glad there are others, which seemingly show a somewhat different approach.

[Alan Howe]

There is a tendency in some recent recordings to adopt tempi which are so fast that articulation suffers. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should...

Example: can the orchestra here really articulate clearly?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR0amzWr0J0
...or is this rather better?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw6slNXSzNg
I know which I prefer.

[Ilja]

Perhaps it's somewhat of an over-compensation of the "great slowing down" of the twentieth century. Still, although I like a first recording of a piece to keep within conventional limits I have no problems with subsequent ones being more experimental.

[Alan Howe]

I agree. However, in the two examples I provided it's clear that the orchestra in the first example cannot articulate clearly the opening of the second movement. At a slightly less frenetic tempo it works much better.