If you’ve ever seen Richard Strauss conduct his own works, it’s the same thing! He churns out exciting performances while looking like he’s going to bore himself to sleep
This performance seems rather plodding and stiff. Check out Bernstein conducting the NY Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1961 for a more lively and interesting performance: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FwB356AO0E4.html
They're playing the notes as perfectly and accurately as the greatest of German orchestras ever could. Whether they're playing the music is another question. Some critics have said that certain American compositions can only be done justice by American orchestras. Those pieces have echoes of American popular music in the melodies and rhythms - sounds that 'might be nearly impossible to notate precisely, but were meant and "heard" by the composer. And even the stuffiest of American string players can recreate them, from a life of having grown up with random bits of pop music coming out of radios all around them. Don't know how true that is, but it's an interesting point.
@@Baribrotzer No, I think that the difference is Bernstein. He is the composer and knew exactly how he wanted it to sound. The above cited 1961 NY Philharmonic performance that he conducted is exactly what he wanted. Just look at the ecstatic expression on his face.
@@jstasiak2262 Just listened to it. The most obvious difference is that it's noticeably faster. But Bernstein also ends many phrases with exclamation points, so to speak, whereas Saraste often ends them with commas. He also punches the rhythms more - in the B "answer" part of the first theme (@0:28 here), he really hits the OOM-PAH, OOM-PAH, OOM-PAH-PAH in the accompaniment, whereas Saraste and the WDR Sinfonieorchester glide over that. Bernstein "puts the eyebrows on it", as Frank Zappa used to say, and Saraste doesn't much. But I still wonder whether it might have been, at least partly, a matter of one orchestra "getting it" and the other not.
