Robin Ticciati & SCO - Schumann: The Symphonies - Herald Scotland

Robin Ticciati's new recording with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra of Schumann's four symphonies hits the mark.

We more or less knew it would: it was such a successful and revealing project in their concert hall performances last season, the chances were it was going to translate well into a double-CD recording. And in most essential elements it has done just that. The lightness and buoyancy that are so much a feature of these masterpieces can be heard right across the stunning, super-articulate SCO performances, emphasising just how far Schumann is from both Mendelssohn and Brahms, and how uniquely his music is his own. And Ticciati shrewdly points out in his well-thought interpretations that the integrity and almost cyclical nature of the music, so well known in the Fourth Symphony, is much more widespread and is clearly evident in the First Symphony. My only beef is that the slow movement of that First Symphony is not just too slow: it's deadly slow, near stalling speed.