Bruno Walter
(1876-1962)
Symphony #1 in D Minor (1906)
NDR Symphony Orchestra/Leon Botstein
CPO 777163-2 59:30
The record companies have given us symphonies by such conductors as Felix Weingartner, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, and now CPO has provided the first of Bruno Walter's two symphonies. Walter had aspired to be the same sort of conductor-composer as Gustav Mahler whose work, as you might expect, was a strong influence on his composition style on the evidence we have here: there are also more than a few traces of such composers as Richard Strauss and Anton Bruckner. While Walter is not as great a composer as his models, he more than holds his own against the work of his fellow conductors.
