Bartok - Stuttgart Recordings

In Stuttgart, 1983 - 1989, Neville Marriner followed Sergiu Celibidache, offering quite the contrast to that willfully prodigious Romanian broodingly charismatic style with his own easygoing, less spectacular but genial manner of music making. His sound wasn't as dense and carefully crafted, but the ensemble's playing became lighter and more flexible, agile rather than probing. It is in his Stuttgart period that Marriner increasingly focused on repertoire that went beyond the baroque and classical periods. This compilation offers repertoire which music lovers will be less likely to associate with Marriner: German romanticism, including all of Schumann's Symphonies, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Bartok and Gershwin - The fundamental impression that comes from re-listening to these performances, apart from good and fresh music-making, is one of sympathetic music-making. That feels about right as an epitaph for the man and his body of work.