Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

THE ART OF ARTHUR GRUMIAUX • Arthur Grumiaux (vn); Frieder Weissmann 1 , Lorin Maazel 2 , Hans Müller-Kray 3 , Bernhard Paumgartner 4 , Carlo Maria Giulini 6 , Ernest Ansermet 8 , Ernest Bour 10 , cond; Riccardo Castagnone 5 , Hans Altmann 7 (pn); Hermann von Beckerath (vc); 9 RAI SO of Turin; 1 Cologne RSO; 2 South German RSO; 3 Mozarteum O; 4 Frankfurt RSO; 6 O de la Suisse Romande; 8 Bavarian RSO 10 • ANDROMEDA 9116, mono (4 CDs: 266:57) Live: Turin, Cologne, Mühlacker, Salzburg, Frankfurt, Munich 1951–62


MOZART 1 Violin Concerto No. 1 2 Violin Concerto No. 3. 3 Violin Concerto No. 4. 4 Violin Concerto No. 5. MENDELSSOHN 6 Violin Concerto in e. SCHUBERT 5 Violin Sonata in A. FRANCK 7 Violin Sonata in A. BRAHMS 8 Violin Concerto. CHAUSSON 1 Poème for Violin and Orchestra. RAVEL 9 Sonata for Violin and Cello. 1 Tzigane. STRAVINSKY 10 Violin Concerto. YSAŸE Sonata for Violin Solo, Ballade in d


Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux (1921–1986) was a fixture of the concert and recording scene when I was growing up. His playing was impeccably clean in style, utilizing a very narrow vibrato that gave his tone a lean yet shimmering sound, very little portamento, and enlivening inflections that provided a nice rhythmic “lift” to his performances. As this set clearly shows, his proclivities were, for the most part, towards Classical and Romantic composers, though he did play the Stravinsky and Berg concertos and Ravel sonata. According to Wikipedia, he made roughly 30 albums during his active career, mostly for the Dutch Philips label but also for EMI. He was, it seems, one of those violinists, like Nathan Milstein, who was admired as much if not more by his peers than by the general public, though of course he was always a top draw in concerts.


Since Grumiaux played most of these works so often (particularly the Mozart concertos, which he recorded complete for Philips with Colin Davis in 1961–62), there are several alternate performances of many of these pieces floating around; e.g., the Mozart No. 1 with Paumgartner and Nos. 3 and 4 with Moralt (the Concerto No. 5 with Paumgartner is on this set), the Mendelssohn Concerto with a very young Haitink, the Brahms with van Beinum, etc. The cover of this set announces that these live performances are all newly remastered in 24-bit/96 kHz sound.


I was particularly fascinated by his interpretation of the Schubert sonata: crisp, direct, and completely lacking in sentimentality, much like Toscanini’s performances of the Schubert symphonies. This is a performance that will thrill musically scrupulous listeners but not at all those who insist that their Schubert be full of Viennese schmaltz. Grumiaux’s version of the Mendelssohn Concerto is quite excellent as well, with surprisingly brisk conducting by Giulini; nothing is rushed, all the notes “sound” with perfect equipoise, yet there is tremendous élan in this reading (and sensitivity, too, relaxing the tempo here and there and playing an absolutely ethereal first-movement cadenza). Because he was Belgian, Grumiaux was sometimes compared to his great predecessor Ysaÿe, but to my ears his sweet, lean tone had much more in common with Sarasate than with Ysaÿe’s somewhat darker sound. As a matter of fact, I felt that Grumiaux’s lean sonority and objectivist approach didn’t work for me in the Franck Sonata or Brahms Concerto, the only performances on the set that I found too uninvolved. I was, however, fascinated by the way he played Ravel, which (as it turns out) was much like his Stravinsky: lean, angular contours, no sentimentality at all, and a way of bringing out the structure without unduly overstressing it. Indeed, the entire last CD was a gem from start to finish.


Your proclivity to acquire this set will probably have as much to do with your desire to own every note Grumiaux ever recorded if you already have most of the studio versions, especially since we are dealing here with monophonic radio sound of varying quality (rather dry in the Turin broadcasts, somewhat roomier and warmer in the German airchecks), particularly since this set is selling for the somewhat hefty price of $52 on Amazon. However, I can attest that Andromeda did a whale of a job cleaning up the sound so that everything sounds clear without the least bit of distortion, particularly in the sound of the string sections of each orchestra, and there is no question that Grumiaux is interesting to hear from start to finish.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Classical Music

"• Played by Sviatoslav Richter 1952-55 • Richter shows all the needed skills and understanding of the composers mystical compositions. • Reference recordings!"

Arch-Romantic Robert Schumann’s (1810-1856) first two-dozen or so opuses feature some of the finest solo piano compositions of the era. Included among these are the works on this two-disc set of WWII-era recordings by the great yet controversial Franco-German pianist Walter Gieseking (1895-1956). +Most noted for his sublime pedal technique and contrapuntal clarity, his performances of Debussy, Ravel and the modernists were often revelatory and are still considered benchmark interpretations.

WAGNER Tannhäuser • Joseph Keilberth, cond; Ramón Vinay ( Tannhäuser ); Gré Brouwenstijn ( Elisabeth ); Herta Wilfert ( Venus ); Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau ( Wolfram von Eschenbach ); Josef Greindl ( Landgraf Hermann ); Volker Horn ( Shepherd ); Josef Traxel ( Walther von der Vogelweide ); Gerhard Stolze ( Heinrich der Schreiber ); Toni Blankenheim ( Biterolf ); Theo Adam ( Reinmar von Zweter ); Bayreuth Festival O & Ch • ANDROMEDA 5162, mono (3 CDs: 183:10) Live: Bayreuth 7/22/1954


I’d really like to know why so many Wagner lovers have a bee in their bonnet over Josef Keilberth. So often in others’ reviews I read that he was routine, dull, unimaginative, etc., etc., yet I’ve always liked his conducting. Even as far back as my earliest years in college, when I was absorbing the Wagner canon from old LP recordings in the library ( Lohengrin with Steber and Windgassen, Fliegende Holländer with Varnay and Uhde, etc.), I always found Keilberth’s conducting well-paced, beautifully phrased and articulated as well as urgent in dramatic scope, and so I find it here. Even as early as the Overture (the Paris version, so it connects to the Venusberg music), Keilberth sounds as if he’s on a mission, and that mission is to make Tannhäuser’s story as thrilling as is humanly possible.


The problem with this release is the sound quality of the orchestra. I don’t know whether this recording stems from an in-house tape or a broadcast, but whichever it is the orchestral sound is harsh. The strings grate, the brasses spit, and the timpani sound like someone hitting a garbage can with mallets. And yet, this is an improvement over the one previous issue I’ve heard on Melodram, which was actually worse than this: The sound was both grating and muddy. At least Andromeda was able to clarify the sound and remove most of the surface noise, and happily the poor sound only affects the loud orchestral passages (like the Overture and the beginning of act II), not the singing. It should be noted that the cover of this release claims all-new 24-bit remastering, although like so many off-brand reissues of classic broadcasts, it has no libretto.


The only somewhat weak link in the cast is Wilfert as Venus. She is just OK. Her voice is not tonally pretty or very expressive except that she yells a good deal, and as I’ve said many times, yelling is not an interpretation. She also has a weak low range, which makes her descents in the scale disappointing. (Yet later on in the scene, the voice becomes less tense and she actually sings the written trills, something many Venuses ignore.) Vinay takes a while to warm up, sounding clumsy in Tannhäuser’s more elegant lines and lacking ease in singing the turns (mordents) in “Dir töne Lob.” Yes, he was an outstanding actor, both visually (which of course we can’t see here) and vocally, and that helps in many scenes of the opera, but I’d have liked a bit more suavity in the opening scene.


Once we leave the Venusberg, however, things brighten up considerably. A quick look at the cast list explains why. We have not only seasoned veterans Greindl and Traxel as Hermann and Walther and the still-young but already-legendary Fischer-Dieskau as Wolfram, but also several singers who would, within a decade, become important artists in their own right, namely Theo Adam, Toni Blankenheim, and Gerhard Stolze. As an extra bonus we get the great Gré Brouwenstijn who, along with Cristina Deutekom, was God’s gift to the soprano world from the Netherlands during the 20th century, as Elisabeth. (I should also mention that boy soprano Horn as the Shepherd is exceptionally good.) In addition, the microphone placement, which makes the orchestra sound so harsh, seems to be perfect for the voices, which all sound right and natural. As the opera progresses, Vinay’s voice brightens and loosens up a little, which is all to the good. (While listening, I kept trying to figure out whose voice he reminded me of; the closest I could come was Bernd Weikl if Weikl sang tenor.)


In act II, the vocal acting reaches new heights. Seldom have I heard Elisabeth sung with such nuance and attention to detail as she is here by Brouwenstijn; listen to the way she paints the words in “Was war es dann,” for instance, and as opposed to Vinay, her vocal elegance in singing the mordents is flawless. Griendl, who could at times sing with a loose vibrato and unfocused tone (as in his studio recordings of Tristan und Isolde and Die Zauberflöte ), is in excellent voice, particularly in the low range, and his singing in “Gar viel und schön ward hier” is both powerful and well-nuanced. I found it ironic that “Blick’ ich umher,” which is supposed to be sung somewhat clumsily by Wolfram (the reason he loses the song contest to Tannhäuser), is so elegantly and beautifully vocalized by Fischer-Dieskau that it almost sounds as if he were giving a Lieder recital. Yet, all in all, the drama builds during this act more suspensefully than I’ve heard it in any other performance of the opera. It’s absolutely hair-raising.


Happily, the Prelude to act III is recorded much better than most of the other orchestral music, possibly because it is mostly played softly. The Pilgrims’ Chorus, taken by Keilberth at a quicker than normal tempo, may sound a tad glib to seasoned Wagnerians yet it still manages to sound fervent, and Brouwenstijn’s ensuing aria (“Allmächt’ge Jungfrau”) is sung with rapturous feeling. Needless to say, “O du mein holder Abendstern” is sung beautifully, but what’s interesting to me about young Fischer-Dieskau is that it was his low range that was better than later on (a situation that made his mid-1970s recording of Die Meistersinger so disappointing). Vinay’s voice, ironically, sounds even deeper than Wolfram’s (later on in his career, he returned to singing baritone and then even sang bass!), but he is locked into the character here, so his “Rome narrative” is movingly and dramatically sung with full attention to words, and his death scene is indescribably moving.


The bottom line, then, is that if you really love Tannhäuser you need to own this performance. Because of the sound quality and lack of a libretto it’s not a first choice—that plum goes to the Dernesch-Kollo-Braun-Solti stereo set on Decca—but all things being equal, the singers are recorded so well that if you simply ignore the harshness of the purely orchestral passages (particularly the loud ones), you’re in for an extraordinary treat. This was a Wieland Wagner production, and somehow or other he and Keilberth got the whole cast to perform at white heat.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

This never-before-released-in-any-format, newly re-mastered, 1960 live performance of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman features the soprano Anja Silja (b. 1940) as Senta in her electrifying Bayreuth Festival debut. +Ms. Silja was a sensational presence on the Bayreuth stage throughout the 1960’s. + Conducted by the eminent Wolfgang Sawallisch, this recording also features tenors Franz Crass and Fritz Uhl, and bass Josef Greindl, noted Wagnerians all, in leading roles.

Every Wagner fanatic knows the famous 1961 Philips label live recording of Der fliegende Holländer with Franz Crass as Holländer. Herewith, Andromeda presents the radio broadcast of the 1961 Bayreuth production which was recorded with the legendary George London, who gave here one of his best interpretations of the Holländer role. This recording shows once again that Mr. London was and remains unsurpassed as the demonic but for forgiveness-begging Holländer. Starring, in addition, Anja Silja, Fritz Uhl and Josef Greindl, this is the First Release in any format of this performance.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

"A cast rich in superlative singers, including bass-baritone George London in his nearly unsurpassable role as Don Giovanni. Joseph Keilberth, whose conductorial reputation was considerably enhanced following the stereo release of his 1955 Bayreuth Ring cycle performance in the 2000's, leads the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra, Munich. Mono recording in splendid sound. Newly remastered."