This series of DVDs will make the publicly broadcast BSO concerts from this era available for the first time since they were broadcast. This rare material represents some of the earliest televised concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and William Steinberg, and has been restored using the greatest care and state-of-the-art techniques. It is of exceptional musical interest and historic value. The BSO's Music Director for just three seasons, Steinberg spent a great deal of time in the USA, having left Europe following Music Director positions in Cologne, Prague and Frankfurt. He also co-founded the Palestine Orchestra, later the Israel Philharmonic. His time with the BSO came at the end of his career following his position as the Music Director of Pittsburgh Symphony, which he held for over 20 years. Steinberg recorded a great deal of material with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to great acclaim, but only a small selection of recordings with the BSO for DG. a live recording of Bruckner 8 with Steinberg and the BSO, from 1972, was issued as part of the orchestra's Centennial Celebration set, and has been described as a 'good, well paced and powerful reading, well played by the Bostonians'. Steinberg leads this Bruckner 8 performance from memory and with great subtlety and distinction in a sympathetic interpretation that provoked a rapturous response from the Boston audience.

Leinsdorf belatedly enters the select list of the greatest Tchaikovsky performances on record.

The previous Leinsdorf offering in this series had a very good-to-fine Schubert 9, an even finer Schumann 4 and a wonderful Wagner “Good Friday Music”. However much you enjoyed it, I should think that only those present in the Boston Symphony Hall on 15 April 1969 could be fully prepared for the impact of the present resuscitation.
 
The first pleasant surprise that the material is in colour, even if definition is not up to modern standards. The second is that Leinsdorf, who was usually seen – before and after 1969 – without a baton and said in a late interview that he felt freer to mould the music expressively with just his hands – marches on with a longish baton and seems accustomed to wielding it. Richard Dyer, whose eye-witness notes continue to be such a valuable feature of this series, makes no mention of this. It would be interesting to know more about Leinsdorf’s use and non-use of the baton.
 
But all this pales before the fact that this sometimes austere and pedantic conductor is on truly inspired and inspiring form, conducting with total involvement. This doesn’t mean that it’s all fast and loud: the Beethoven goes at a good but not excessive pace and there is plenty of expressive weight to the introduction. The wind phrases in the allegro are beautifully turned and the coda truly blazes.
 
Leinsdorf’s Beethoven is a known factor. If it wasn’t always this good, I suppose it doesn’t need a lot of imagination to see that, on the right day, it could be. But his Tchaikovsky?
 
Leinsdorf only recorded one Tchaikovsky Symphony commercially, the Sixth with the Los Angeles Philharmonic some years before his Boston appointment. I’ve never heard this, nor have I ever seen it spoken of with bated breath. Whereas the internet grapevine has been shouting excitedly about this Fifth ever since somebody posted an incomplete sound-only version, as Richard Dyer relates. I can well understand those internet commentators who say they’ll never listen to their other discs of the work now this is available, or one who actually heard it at the time and has been unable to find a performance to match it – not even Mravinsky – ever since.
 
On the face of it, Leinsdorf doesn’t “do” anything particular with the music. The introduction is brooding but also purposeful – he notes that it is “andante” not “adagio” and one senses a great latent power behind waiting to be unleashed. His “Allegro con anima” does not sidle in slowly, gaining speed later, he sets an up-front tempo straight away. It will sound very fast to some listeners. But this is his tempo, so the first crescendo is not accompanied by an accelerando and the hammering passages go at about the “normal” speed. Nor does he deviate from this tempo, except where Tchaikovsky actually requests a slower pace for the second subject. Leinsdorf plays this with great tenderness and free rubato, even risking some less precise ensemble. On paper, this might sound like one of Leinsdorf’s dogmatic demonstrations, and if he had subsequently taken the performance into the studio I fear it might have turned into just that. I must emphasize that here everything is white-hot and convinces as a free expression of emotions.
 
So, too, does the slow movement. The tempo is pretty steady but there is a sense of free-soaring passion which completely effaces any sense of the four-square. The waltz has an elegance which does not prevent exploitation of its darker moments while the finale carries all before it. The coda has an air of crude triumph presaging Mahler. Audience reaction is rightly rapturous and even Leinsdorf manages some smiles. It looks as though the Bostonians learnt to love Leinsdorf just as he was on his way out.
 
I haven’t ventured to compare this with other favourites. Once the initial impact has worn off I cannot believe that performance by such as Mravinsky or Markevich, which have provided inspiration to generations (and to me) can be wholly and eternally eclipsed. The case still remains for a cooler, more brooding approach, notably provided – in very primitive sound – by Landon Ronald. At the opposite extreme, the capacity of late Celibidache to bend your internal clock and suspend disbelief at his time-dilations is not to be dismissed either. What I am quite sure of is that Leinsdorf has belatedly entered the select list of the greatest Tchaikovsky performances on record.
 
Back to batonless Leinsdorf in black and white for the Mozart bonus. He puts on an incredibly autocratic face with black looks all round. Those used to modern Mozart will gasp at the fullness of the first attack, yet there is lilt as well as majesty, and delicacy later on, Leinsdorf shaping the music with crisp finger-movements.
 
An interesting filler, perhaps. But don’t miss the Tchaikovsky on any account.
 
-- Christopher Howell, MusicWeb International

LEINSDORF CONDUCTS BEETHOVEN AND TCHAIKOVSKY

Ludwig van Beethoven: Egmont, Op. 84: Overture
Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Erich Leinsdorf, conductor

Recorded at Symphony Hall, Boston, 15 April 1969

Bonus:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Serenade No. 9 in D major, K. 320, "Posthorn": II. Menuetto: Allegretto

Recorded at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, 15 January 1963

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Enhanced Mono
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language: English
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 57 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

William Steinberg conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This rare material, filmed in color, represents some of the earliest televised concerts with of Steinberg with the BSO, restored using the greatest care and state-of-the-art techniques.

CHARLES MUNCH CONDUCTS HANDEL AND MOZART

George Frideric Handel: Water Music Suite (arr. H. Harty)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Symphony No. 36 in C major, K. 425, “Linz”
Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504, “Prague”

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Charles Munch, conductor

Recorded live from Sanders Theatre, Harvard University on 12 April 1960 (Water Music), 8 April 1958 (Linz Symphony), and 3 November 1959 (Prague Symphony)

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Enhanced Mono
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language: English
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 62 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

Precious, unrecorded symphonies served up in vital, energising readings.

It sometimes seems as if WGBH-TV Boston had its camera crew surgically attached to the Sanders Theatre at Harvard. Maybe the crew emerged blinking from a surfeit of lectures, keen to get reacquainted with Charles Munch. The torrent of TV material now emerging on ICA Classics is both very welcome and very difficult to sift. What, usefully, should the critic do to suggest why you may or may not wish to buy this DVD, especially if the critic is me, one who suffers from a dual impulse; firstly to buy DVDs like this and then to despair of ever finding or making the time to watch them.
 
So, what’s in it for you when you consider this latest Munch DVD? I’m not saying ICA is being naughty but there’s no indication that this is black and white footage; most people will know this, but not everyone will, even if there’s a still of Munch (in black and white) on the box cover. So it’s black and white and in mono. The dates of the concerts are 1958, 1959 and 1960.
 
The first thing that’s in it for you is that Munch never recorded the two Mozart symphonies in the studio. This makes this AV representation especially valuable. Another thing in it for you, should you be interested in such things (I am), is to see the Boston Symphony in action - the players, the faces, their responses, maybe to try to put names to the faces. To this extent I wish ICA and other companies (almost no one does this, so I’m not singling out ICA) would provide a personnel listing of the orchestra at the time. I appreciate it may not be wholly accurate but I think it would be a nice touch.
 
Things start with the Handel-Harty Water Music suite, a performance of Beechamesque brio and bravado. If you miss the days of such arrangements then Munch and the Boston won’t let you down. The basses are positioned behind the French horns, and the top to bottom sonority, despite the mono sound, is highly enjoyable. Even though Adolf Busch, Boyd Neel and countless others had trail-blazed in this repertoire, Munch makes no concessions, and nor should he have done. Munch is at his most animated in the Allegro finale, smiling very slightly, his baton swishing about fly-fisherman style in his exuberance. One notices that the director decided that a good idea would be a camera shot ‘stepping down’ the orchestral sections, reasonable in theory, but dodgy in practice, not least when the camera slips, as it does once. One also notices that the Boston was an almost all-male orchestra at the time, and that the average age of the strings, at least, must have been quite high. There are some especially patrician looking gentlemen in the first violin section.
 
The Linz Symphony is from 1958 and has by far the most degraded film of the three. Grainy and rather unclear, a critic should counsel gently on this point. It’s hardly unwatchable, but you will most certainly notice the difference. The performance is in Munch’s best, taut and linear style; I would suggest George Szell as a reasonable point of comparison in terms of expression. Though sometimes tense, it’s never driven and the wind phrasing throughout is a delight. The Prague was taped in November 1959, with footage comparable in quality to the April 1960 Handel. I sense, unless it’s the increased clarity of the film that alerts me to the upturned eyes directed toward Munch’s beat, that the orchestra follows him that bit more circumspectly in this symphony. He makes the briefest of pauses between the first and second movements, ensuring a kind of symphonic continuity to occur. The band is ready for him, and the unindulged Andante is all the better for his unsentimental approach. The only demerit is not musical but filmic; some mildly chaotic camera panning shots that disrupt things briefly.
 
Despite such imperfections, I enjoyed the DVD. It enshrines those precious, unrecorded symphonies, grants visual immortality to the Boston denizens, and serves up vital, energising readings. How often you will play it, however, is a question that only you can answer.
 
-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International 

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Isaac Stern's career as a solo artist, chamber musician, and much else (he led the movement to save Carnegie hall) was remarkable. This album of his live performances is an eloquent testament to his musical insights, technical command and his gorgeous, luminous tone. Isaac Stern was born in 1920, in Krimieniecz, now in Ukraine. A year later his parents came to San Francisco. Violin lessons began at eight, with Naoum Blinder. Two years later he made his debut, playing Bach double concerto with his teacher. His Town Hall debut in 1937 was followed by a Carnegie Hall debut in 1943. He was the first American artist to tour the former Soviet Union-and as a result became a deeply respected figure there. The campaign to save Carnegie Hall began in 1960. The Six-Day War of 1967 saw his iconic performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Leonard Bernstein on Mount Scopus. His involvement with Hollywood, which began in 1948 with his performance in the film Humoresque, was followed up in 1971, when he played on the soundtrack of "Fiddler on the Roof". His travel to China in 1979 led to a resurgence of classical music in that country, documented in "From Mao to Mozart". He recorded prolifically and received countless honors and tributes. Isaac Stern passed away at the age of 81 in 2001.

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO 3 LEIN

The Great Live Concerts

EARLY RECORDINGS

The featured work on this album of compositions by Justin Dello Joio is the American composer's new piano concerto; "Oceans Apart"; composed for keyboard titan; Garrick Ohlsson. Ohlsson is joined by the Boston Symphony Orchestra; conducted by Alan Gilbert; the artists who premiered the concerto in 2023. The program also includes chamber works performed by the New York Philharmonic's principal cellist; Carter Brey; with pianist Christopher O'Riley; and the American Brass Quintet; and organist Colin Fowler. For more information see www.justindellojoio.net

When Christian Ferras died at age 49. his friend and colleague Yehudi Menuhin wrote that Ferras was"possessed by music, immensely talented, and of both a generous and intense temperament."

Christian Ferras was one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. Born in 1933, he was a guest soloist of the Nice Symphony orchestra in1942. In 1948 he won the First Prize at the International Scheveningen (Holland) Violin Competition and in 1949 won the top prize at the International Long-Thibaud Competition. Thereafter, he pursued a successful career as soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras and in recitals with his long time accompanist, pianist Pierre Barbizet. He recorded for EMI and from 1964 for DG where he recorded the four main repertoire violin concertos, Brahms, Sibelius, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Fortunately, Christian Ferras left behind a rich recorded legacy, that enable us to continue to enjoy his great artistry.

When William Steinberg was appointed music director of the Boston Symphony in 1969 as successor to Erich Leinsdorf, he attained the pinnacle of his career. No previous conductor had headed two top-ten US orchestras simultaneously. It was a condition of his Boston position that he could continue to work in Pittsburgh with the orchestra that he had headed since 1952.

Born as Hans Wilhelm Steinberg in Cologne on 1 August 1899, he studied at the local conservatory with the conductor Hermann Abendroth and the pianist Lazzaro Uzielli, a Clara Schumann pupil. On graduating in 1920 he became Otto Klemperer’s assistant at the Cologne opera house. In 1929 he was appointed music director in Frankfurt. Relieved of his post by the Nazis in 1933, he conducted concerts in Frankfurt and Berlin under the auspices of the Jewish Cultural League before emigrating to Palestine in 1936 to take over the Palestine Orchestra (now Israel Philharmonic Orchestra). At Toscanini’s invitation he went to the United States in 1938 to assist in forming and training the new NBC Symphony Orchestra. In 1945, he assumed the music directorship of the Buffalo Philharmonic, where he liked to refer to himself as “Buffalo Bill”.

The Steinberg/Boston collaboration with RCA was unfortunately ill-fated and short-lived. Not because of the repertoire, but plummeting sales and spiraling costs plaguing the American recording industry in general persuaded RCA to let its contract with the Boston Symphony lapse after 52 years’ association. Gramophone magazine’s Peter Quantrill claimed in 2018 that Steinberg was “the most under-recorded of great conductors in the second half of the last century.”

In 2004, the critic Richard Freed wrote of the Schubert Ninth (CD 1) and Bruckner Sixth (CD 2) Symphonies: “Both [are] vital and inspiring performances, free of the monumentalizing all too often inflicted on such music: they are among the best entries in his discography and among the finest recordings of the works.” According to John L. Holmes in Conductors on Record, they were also Steinberg’s favorites among his own recordings. Mendelssohn’s own orchestration of the Scherzo from his Octet and Stravinsky’s Scherzo fantastique and Scherzo à la russe, coupled on CD 3 with formidable virtuoso renderings of orchestral showpieces by Dukas, Richard Strauss and Saint-Saëns, were originally prepared for release on LP LSC-3155 but remained unpublished – until now.

This survey of RCA Boston Symphony recordings during the Steinberg era is rounded off with 1970 tapings of Dvorák’s “New World” Symphony and Carnival Overture (CD 4) from the same recording period by Arthur Fiedler, former BSO violinist and longstanding conductor of the Boston Pops. His recordings of mainly light repertoire for RCA generated total sales of well over 50 million. Nevertheless, it was his ambition to record a major symphony, and here RCA belatedly granted his wish, placing the full Boston Symphony Orchestra at his disposal for the first and only time.

All recordings in the set have been newly transferred and remastered from the 3-track (CD 1), 4-track (CDs 2, 3 [1-6], 4) and 2-track (CD 3 [7-9]) analog tapes using 24 bit / 192 kHz technology.

A New Yorker review about Rudolf Serkin from 2017 states: “his performances… reflect his sense of titanic struggle to realize the ideas and emotions that he found in the words that he played. He bypassed the surface sheen of ingratiating sounds to render the beauty of that struggle; his piano tone is itself the sound of struggle filled with the meeting of metal and wood and evoking spiritual exaltation through physical and intellectual exertion.” Rudolf Serkin was born in 1903 Bohemia. His musical gifts emerged early, and he made his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic at 12. His European career extended throughout the 20s and 30s. He first played in the United States in 1933, and three years later appeared with the New York Philharmonic under Toscanini, eventually performing with them over 100 times. Rudolf Serkin became one of the most admired pianists of the 20th century. He performed and recorded extensively with the top international orchestras and conductors. This is the second volume in our Rudolf Serkin Live series.

SOMM Recordings’ celebration of the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ birth continues with Volume 2 of Vaughan Williams Live, featuring historic performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult in new, signature remasterings by Lani Spahr with authoritative booklet notes by Vaughan Williams’ biographer Simon Heffer. Two works featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus include a 1945 BBC radio broadcast of the first performance of the wartime masterpiece Thanksgiving for Victory – with soprano Elsie Suddaby, organist George Thalben-Ball and Valentine Dyall as the speaker – and the rapturous Serenade to Music from the opening night of the BBC’s Third Programme (now Radio 3) in 1946. First performed in 1938 in celebration of Henry Wood’s jubilee as a conductor and originally composed for 16 solo singers, it appears here in its version for orchestra, chorus and four soloists – Isobel Baillie (soprano), Astra Desmond (contralto), Beveridge White (tenor), and Harold Williams (baritone). Its dedicatee, Boult, conducts a performance of Job: A Masque for Dancing in 1946 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra before he made his four studio recordings of the work. Volume 1 of Vaughan Williams Live (SOMM Ariadne 5016) was hailed by All About the Arts as “beautifully remastered [and] sounding like pure gold” and was The Symphonist’s Record of the Week. SOMM’s other Vaughan Williams recordings include the Gramophone Award-winning Symphony No.5 and Dona Nobis Pacem with the LPO/BBCSO (SOMMCD 071), and The Piano Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams by Mark Bebbington and Rebecca Omordia (SOMMCD 0164), described by International Piano as “compelling”.

SOMM Recordings announces a major new release: the first appearance on album of live performances of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth and Sibelius’ Second Symphonies by the iconic conductor Serge Koussevitzky and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This historic, two-album set includes an exclusive, specially-commissioned documentary about Koussevitzky’s Boston Symphony Orchestra tenure and his LPO guest appearances, featuring interviews with four key players from both orchestras by Jon Tolansky. Tolansky’s revealing hour-long documentary includes wide-ranging musical excerpts and contributions from former BSO players Harry Ellis Dickson (violin), Everett ‘Vic’ Firth (timpani), and Harry Shapiro (sub-principal horn), and erstwhile LPO sub-principal horn Patrick Strevens. The symphonies are heard in performances Koussevitzky conducted with the LPO in London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1950. Both have been expertly restored by Lani Spahr. Noted authority on historical recordings Rob Cowan provides detailed booklet notes on the “individual, flexible, flammable, emotionally candid and utterly spontaneous” Koussevitzky’s stewardship of both orchestras. He describes the Tchaikovsky as “especially unique [in] its unsparing volatility.... The explosive climaxes leave the audience stunned”. Of the Sibelius, he says: “Koussevitzky’s London Second is as comprehensive an overview of the work as we have”.

Lani Spahr’s previous restorations for SOMM include the four-disc Elgar Remastered (SOMMCD 261-4) featuring recordings from the composer’s own collection, hailed by Audiophilia as “a fascinating achievement which will have you wishing for more”. George Szell: The Forgotten Recordings was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice and awarded a Diapason d’Or as “a major discovery”. Jon Tolansky is the founder of the Music Performance Research Centre (now Music Preserved) and a widely admired producer of audio documentaries on classical musicians. For Spahr’s restorations on Beecham Conducts Sibelius, he produced a 30-minute audio documentary. MusicWeb International declared it “an unmissable disc [that] walks straight into a position of eminence in the catalogue”.

One of the most legendary conductors of the twentieth century, Charles Munch was, with Pierre Monteux, certainly the greatest French conductor. After a long activity in France, Munch then moved to the United States, becoming an American citizen and reaching the apex with the conduction of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with which he recorded a large number of performances, especially symphonies, published by RCA. These 2 albums represent an important document of some live concert versions of his American activity and are completely unpublished. The sound quality is excellent!

Classical Music