SCHUBERT Symphony No. 5. SCHUMANN Genoveva Overture; Symphony No. 2 • Charles Munch, cond; Boston SO • ICA ICAD 5052 (DVD: 76:00) Live: Cambridge 02/27/1962, 04/18/1961, 04/07/1959

Yet another volume appears in the ICA series of releases of Boston Symphony telecasts with Charles Munch, and this is a particularly successful one. All of the performances here are taken from concerts given in Sanders Hall at Harvard University, rather than from Symphony Hall in Boston. While the audio quality in all three works is quite acceptable monaural sound—only occasionally suffering from congestion or blare—the quality of the video portions varies significantly, being poorer with increasing age. All suffer from a considerable degree of bleaching out of the black-and-white film; in addition, the Schubert is somewhat grainy and murky, while in extended portions of the Schumann symphony the musicians’ faces and figures become blurry and distorted. Somehow this never affects Munch himself, whose trademark long baton whips about in a flurry of motion sufficient to trigger a tornado. As with other issues in this series, the set includes the introductions to the original broadcasts (here, for the two symphonies) by longtime Boston Symphony announcer William Pierce.

Of the three works presented here, the only one that Munch recorded commercially was the Genoveva Overture, and that back in 1951. That version wears its age well and is competitive with the one presented here. Live performances of the other two works have been issued elsewhere: a 1952 Schubert Fifth and 1955 Schumann Second, both by West Hill Radio Archive, and a 1956 Schumann Second from a concert tour in Moscow by Arte. However, in addition to the video dimension (not a great desideratum for me), these performances of the symphonies have several advantages over the rival versions. The WHRA issues are in a large multi-CD set of Boston Symphony performances from the earlier 1950s that limit their appeal almost exclusively to dedicated Munch collectors. These later performances are not only preserved in superior sound—much moreso in the case of the Schubert—but are also in superior interpretations that benefit greatly from slightly slower tempi.

Munch’s brisk take on the Schubert Fifth is the antipode of the lyrical Gemütlichkeit of Bruno Walter or the stateliness of Karl Böhm, both very Viennese; but what is exhilarating in 1962 crosses over into the jarringly manic a decade earlier. The final movement in 1962 still suffers from some abrupt shifts in tempi and is one point here where Munch is not at his best. While I much prefer Walter’s approach, I nonetheless find this a bracing alternative that challenges my previously held conceptions of how this piece ought to sound.

With Schumann, we come to a composer for whom Munch had a very special affinity. It is a crying shame that his only studio recordings of the major orchestral works were the First Symphony for RCA and the Piano Concerto for EMI; fortunately live performances of the Fourth Symphony and Cello Concerto have also found their way into print, leaving the Third Symphony as the major gap in a Munch Schumann discography. Of the composer’s four symphonies, the Second has proved to be far and away the most difficult for conductors to get right; in my estimation the number of recorded performances that exceed mere competency and achieve greatness can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Here we have one of those exalted rarities. There are no traces of leaden heaviness anywhere, and Schumann’s often dense orchestration is made to shine. The ever-tricky transition from the slow introduction to the faster main section of the first movement is nicely gauged, though Munch needs a few bars to get up to full speed. The finale is a model of triumphant exuberance, though the latter section is taken a tad too quickly for my taste and requires the conductor to slow back down slightly for the final peroration on the trumpets and timpani, which is dispatched without the unnatural exaggeration that too often spoils the symphony’s close. The rendition of the overture is on a similar plane of excellence. In sum, then, this DVD is warmly recommended to fans of Munch, aficionados of historic performances, and lovers of Schumann alike.

FANFARE: James A. Altena

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Recorded live from Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, 18 April 1961 (Genoveva), 7 April 1959 (Symphony No. 2), and 27 February 1962 (Schubert) Picture format: NTSC 4:3 Sound format: LPCM Mono Region code: 0 (worldwide) Menu language: English Booklet notes: English, French, German Running time: 75 mins No. of DVDs: 1

This previously unreleased live recording of Jacqueline du Pré playing the Schumann Cello Concerto is her first public performance of the work, given in the Royal Festival Hall on 12 December 1962 with Jean Martinon conducting the BBCSO. She had worked intensively on the concerto with Paul Tortelier in Paris prior to this concert. When Du Pré studied the Schumann with Mstislav Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1966, he exclaimed, ‘This is the most perfect Schumann I have ever heard’. The 1962 live performance of the Dvorák Cello Concerto by Rostropovich has also never before been released. He is partnered by Carlo Maria Giulini, who went on to to make a studio recording of the same concerto with him in 1977. The Times critic described this Edinburgh Festival performance as an ‘exciting’ and ‘emotionally supercharged interpretation’ with Giulini’s reading ‘full of finely wrought points of detail’. The attractive bonus features Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya in the Ária from Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras.

This authorized BBC tape has never been issued before. The recital is slightly unusual in that Gilels opens with Schumann's rarely heard Four Klavierstuckeop.32. Gilels only performed these pieces late in his career from 1977 to 1984. This is an exceptionally rare CD and presents the Russian pianist at his best in a relaxed, informal atmosphere. There is a beautifully played encore - Mozart's D minor Fantasy K397 - which is also featured on this well-filled 80+minute disc.

There isn’t a lot of Leinsdorf material on DVD, but maybe this ICA series of long-hidden BSO telecasts will gradually change that. A few years ago I reviewed a DVD in which Leinsdorf, around twenty years later, rehearsed and performed a sequence from Parsifal and Schumann 4 with the South-West German Radio Symphony Orchestra (Arthaus 101 153).

The elder-statesman Leinsdorf had a more well-fed appearance, above all a more satisfied one. He recalled his Boston years as particularly fraught and he has here the shifty, nervous look of a harassed garage mechanic, a conductorial presence that might have amused Alfred Hitchcock. Indeed, he has more than a passing resemblance to the actor chosen as the hired killer in “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, so what a pity Leinsdorf could not have conducted the Benjamin “Storm Cantata” in place of Bernard Herrmann, opening up potential vistas of cinematic cross-play. I doubt if the maestro would have accepted, though.

Leinsdorf has always aroused mixed feelings, not least in Boston itself. Comparing this DVD with the Munch one I recently reviewed it’s clear he didn’t have Munch’s natural charisma, he wasn’t a “ladies’ man”, he was interpretively austere and his batonless gestures, of exemplary clarity and purpose when seen from the orchestra’s side, looked dull from the back. On the other hand, I doubt if he ever in his life made a travesty of the music like Munch’s really awful Bruckner 7.

The Schubert – which Leinsdorf did not record in the studio – opens with a majestic tread. The Allegro is punchy but steady enough to accommodate the second subject with little or no slackening of speed. The coda, while not slammed through dogmatically – go to René Leibowitz for that – avoids lurching to a halt the way it often did under conductors of Leinsdorf’s generation. There’s just a little broadening in the very final statement.

All this is admirable, and I really do admire it. All the same, a little bird – or maybe a carrion crow – sat on my shoulder making all the traditional anti-Leinsdorf points about the well-oiled mechanism, about the gestures that seemed aimed, not so much at spontaneously igniting the music as at reminding the musicians of points painstakingly made in rehearsal. The suspicion that everything is following a pre-ordained trajectory that surprises no one is potentially damning. I was reminded, too, that John Holmes (“Conductors”, Gollancz 1988) approvingly quoted Paul Henry Lang’s remark that “he is not adept at those nearly imperceptible tempo and dynamic adjustments that give life to music”.

I think this, like my carrion crow, misses the point, or misinterprets the point. It is not a matter of being “adept” or not at such things, rather that for Leinsdorf the austere intellectual these things didn’t “give life to music”, they were the icing on a cake that tasted better plain. He elected to live in a musical world where every phrase, every gesture, had its logical place, its logical connection with the other phrases and gestures. These are the fundamentals of music construction, we must surely agree, and for him they were enough.

Maybe they should be enough for us too. Or rather, since it takes all sorts to make a world, we should expect Leinsdorf to convince us at least for the duration of the performance that he is giving us all we need. And there we are; since my carrion crow squawked a few times during that long first movement of the Schubert, thus far Leinsdorf had engaged me mainly intellectually.

But then, just when you think you’ve got Leinsdorf pigeon-holed, he comes up with something unexpected. The second movement is ambling along very nicely, you are thinking, when he starts really digging into the phrasing and engages you on a deeper level. This second movement, painfully expressive, tender, dramatic and passionate by turns, ranks with the best I’ve heard, and this begins to colour my reaction to the whole symphony.

The scherzo is slightly slower than the norm, but with very detailed care over the rhythms to keep it alive, the finale is punchy and grand. Bostonians may have missed Munch’s ebullience – his studio recording of this symphony is celebrated – and maybe too his tow-path shouts. Let’s hope at least some of them queried whether Leinsdorf was not penetrating more deeply under the skin of the music.

Schumann 4 was a particular favourite with Leinsdorf. He made a studio recording of it in the teeth of RCA’s protests that it wouldn’t sell. Perhaps it didn’t – they refused his wish to record the second. Much earlier, he had recorded the first in Cleveland (1946).

At the end of his life Leinsdorf came to prefer Schumann’s first version of the symphony and light, transparent textures. In 1962, as Richard Dyer’s notes point out, he was using the traditional revised version with some of Mahler’s accretions. As can be heard from the beginning, he makes full use of the deep sonorities the BSO was able to provide.

Furtwängler’s seething textures and febrile conviction, in his DG recording, virtually created this symphony for several generations of listeners. Leinsdorf takes a more deliberate, stern view of the first movement allegro, yet the tension never flags and this joins the few recorded versions that enable me to set aside the memory of Furtwängler.

The “Romanze” brings another of those Leinsdorf minor miracles. Deeply tender and expressive, it touches on sublimity as concertmaster Joseph Silverstein’s solo violin weaves around the texture. Great energy in the remaining two movements with a terrific transition between the two.

The upward trend continues in the Wagner extract, reminding us that Leinsdorf maybe unbent most easily in the opera house. While in a sense he remains true to his strict-tempo convictions, the music is shaped overall in great waves, suggesting a long-term fluidity. The restless spiritual yearning of the music is ideally present and this time it’s the solo oboe’s contribution that rises to sublimity. A great piece of Wagner conducting.

This DVD, then gives a very truthful picture of Leinsdorf. It reveals his very considerable strengths and, if the Schubert occasionally hints at his less sympathetic side, it does not do so to the extent that it’s likely to put anyone off. The picture and sound are reasonable for the date.

-- Christopher Howell, MusicWeb International

Franz Schubert:
Piano Trio No. 1 in B flat major, Op. 99, D. 898
Piano Trio No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 100, D. 929

Beaux Arts Trio

Recorded at Signet Library, Edinburgh, 13 July 1987 (Piano Trio No. 1) and 6 September 1977 (Piano Trio No. 2)

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: LPCM Mono
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language: English
Running time: 81 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

The Beaux Arts Trio performs two central pieces of their repertoire on this DVD. Filmed at the majestic Signet Library in Edinburgh, the ensemble demonstrates its mastery in bringing out the deeply lyrical romantic expressions that have made these trios two of Schubert’s most cherished chamber music works. With founding member, Menahem Pressler on piano, Isidore Cohen on violin and Bernard Greenhouse on cello, the ensemble’s distinguished heritage is apparent.

The ICA Classics Legacy series presents a collection of historic performances by some of the world’s greatest artists. These performances are released on DVD for the first time, incorporating rare archive footage that has been expertly and lovingly restored. - ICA Classics

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas: No. 6 in F; No. 29 in B?, “Hammerklavier.” SCHUBERT Impromptu in B?, D 935/3 • Wilhelm Backhaus (pn) • ICA 5055 (62:35) Live: Bonn 9/24/1959


This recital features Wilhelm Backhaus (1884–1969) near the end of his long career. The German pianist was known throughout his lifetime for his interpretations of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and Mozart primarily, though it should not be forgotten that he was the first person ever to record the 24 Chopin etudes back in 1928. This recording remains a remarkable document of the ease of execution and the elegance of musical interpretation he shared with certain members of that generation of pianists. His technique was formidable in his heyday and—perhaps even more astonishing—it remained so to the very end of his career.


The opening of the “Hammerklavier” Sonata is a bit slow and heavy, but this soon gives way to a torrent of energy and an upsurge in tempo just a few bars later. Backhaus seems to want to show that each theme, each section, has its own character, which needs an adjustment in tempo to best bring that out. The pianist makes the most of the diverse musical sections in the sonata, from the fluid and graceful scalar passages in the first movement, which sound like shimmering silky waves made of delicate musical fabric in his hands, to the big chordal passages, which are powerful walls of sound that surround and engulf the listener. Backhaus has no qualms about enhancing the effect of certain of these latter passages by adding extra sonority in the bass parts—most often just doubling the octave. The slow movement, one of the most difficult and sublime in Beethoven’s oeuvre, is emotionally taxing to even the most seasoned performers. Backhaus intelligently chooses a flowing tempo: never so slow as to drag, but never too fast as to trivialize the music. The finale is taken at a brisk pace. There may be a few wrong notes here and there (albeit not very many), but his sense of pacing is thrilling: There is more than just a sense of danger; there is in his interpretations the conviction that regardless of the obstacles, he will triumph in the end. There is as much fire in this “Hammerklavier” as the best of them.


The other works on the recital are well played as well, the Schubert being particularly inspired. The gentle way in which the pianist caresses the instrument betrays the age in which he matured: This is elegant and lyrical, and Backhaus shows that though this composition is in the same key as Beethoven’s grandest essay for the piano, it is in character lightyears apart. The Beethoven F-Major Sonata is no minor work, and Backhaus gives it all the respect and love that he does the rest of the program. The opening movement is playful in that Haydnesque vein, the fugato finale lighthearted yet filled with Beethovenian determination and drive. The quirky middle movement is perhaps my favorite in the sonata, though. Backhaus revels in the mysterious opening phrases, lightening the path through the middle section, bringing the piece to a wistful end. It is three and a half minutes of pure bliss.


This is a remarkable recital, one that grows on you the more you listen to it—one captured in remarkable sound given its vintage. For a live recital, one should expect a few wrong notes here and there. Backhaus at 75 plays as few as I’ve ever heard in a riveting performance of the “Hammerklavier.” This is no lightweight rendering of the piece, either; this is one to remember. That said, I have a few other favorites: Richter, Gilels, Rudolf Serkin. The one that I come back to more than any other, though, is Peter Serkin (on Pro Arte). There is in his playing the soaring of spiritual heights along with a real sense of structural logic. The fugal finale is brisk, light, rhythmic—almost jazzy—in his hands. But Backhaus is a welcome addition to my collection. If you are a fan of the “Hammerklavier,” then this recording should be welcome to yours as well.


FANFARE: Scott Noriega

This new DVD preserves some superb performances directed by a conductor of the highest calibre, performing live and at the peak of his abilities.



STRAUSS Ein Heldenleben 1. DVO?ÁK Symphony No. 9, “From the New World 2” • Rudolf Kempe, cond; 1 Royal PO; 2 BBC SO • ICA 5009, mono (DVD: 89:22) Live: Royal Albert Hall, London 1 8/28/1974; 2 8/29/1975


How absolutely wonderful it is to see Rudolf Kempe, looking hale and fit, ascend the podium and direct an absolutely magical performance of Ein Heldenleben with his usual minimum of podium fuss, his face mirroring both the music’s changes and his obvious pleasure at hearing it emerge the way he wants, the Royal Philharmonic members playing their little hearts out for him. This is exactly the way I always imagined Kempe in performance, as close to Toscanini’s podium style as any conductor who outlived him, eliciting that magical, transparent sound, ignoring nothing in rhythmic acuity and liveliness, and now we have the pleasure of seeing how he did it.


The sound is still mono but the images are in color. The members of the orchestra look completely rapt in concentration; everything in this performance is focused on the music, nothing on how they look to the audience. A bit dull to watch? Perhaps. But, like watching such similar conductors as Toscanini, Doráti, and Böhm, it amazes one that such exuberance of spirit and a rich palette of colors can emanate from such outward calm and control. For make no mistake, Kempe was a master of coloration. He knew how to make an orchestra “speak.” He knew the secret, now lost to a modern generation of conductors, of how to play music like this so that it sounded not only beautiful but noble, eschewing bombast in favor of the long line, the gradual ebb and flow of suspense, and—I reiterate—that unbelievable palette of colors he had at his disposal. Kempe’s strings had the sound of a choir singing.


In my experience there was only one performance of Ein Heldenleben I really loved prior to hearing this performance, and that was Willem Mengelberg’s 1941 broadcast with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. The Concertgebouw of that time was by no means the technically precise instrument that the New York Philharmonic of 1928 was, in his Victor recording, but there is so much more detail and drama in the later performance that I forgave the roughly played passages. Kempe’s Heldenleben is an entirely different animal. The contrasts are all musical, not as dramatic, but with a flow and coloristic quality that make the score sound more akin to the upward spiral of ascending angels than to Mengelberg’s explosive reading (though they join hands in “The Hero’s Deeds of War”). There is nothing like it in my experience, not even Kempe’s studio recording for EMI, because the studio recording adds the goop of mid 1960s reverb to a performance that doesn’t need it. Here we have, if you will, Kempe urtext, and the result is simply mind-boggling. Listen, for instance, to the way he makes the low bass passage resound with great depth without sounding heavy or ponderous. His legato flow is seamless, the accuracy and crispness of his attacks and releases flawless. It was exactly moments like these that took your breath away when listening to a Kempe performance.


Yet he resented EMI’s pushing him as a Wagner and Strauss specialist. Kempe conducted a great deal more than that, Schubert, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Dvo?ák, Shostakovich, and Bruckner among them, and all of them well (he’s one of the few conductors besides Furtwängler who, to me, made some sense of Bruckner’s succession of endings in his symphonies), and here he follows Heldenleben with the “New World” Symphony of Dvo?ák. Unexpectedly, his performance of this symphony is startlingly dramatic, having almost the punch and drama of Toscanini’s excellent 1953 recording, only with Kempe’s patented transparency. The orchestra swells and ebbs flawlessly and naturally under his guiding hands; an unexpected rubato after the brief flute solo is picked up with tremendous force when the brass and high strings erupt again. Dozens of little details—clipped rhythmic accents here, buoyant legato bridges there—mark this interpretation as unique.


Kempe uses a fairly small baton, even a little smaller than Toscanini’s but not as tiny as the toothpicks that Strauss and Reiner used. His arms are a little further apart than Toscanini’s, but he is only slightly more animated on the podium, his arms moving in graceful arcs. Only a few months after the Dvo?ák performance came the shocking announcement that Kempe had died. I can remember that moment as if it were yesterday; it grieved me more than you can imagine. He had a very special gift, sought by many but bestowed on few, and we are all the poorer for his untimely passing.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley


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In a letter to his friend, the distinguished French man of letters Romain Rolland, Richard Strauss categorically denied that he was the model for Ein Heldenleben: “I am not a hero. I have not got the necessary strength; I am not cut out for battle; I prefer to withdraw, to be quiet, to have peace.”

Some commentators may have refused to take Strauss at his word, but the uncredited director of this BBC transmission of a 1974 Proms concert is clearly not among them. His view of things is crystal clear for, throughout the whole of the work’s first section, a musical depiction of Der Held (The Hero), he resolutely directs his cameras at the conductor. There is, in fact, not a single second of that opening 4:59 of music when Rudolf Kempe is not pictured on-screen, whether in close-up, middle distance or in long-shot. The corollary of that fact is that as soon as we begin the work’s second section, Des Helden Widersacher (The Hero’s Adversaries), we start to see the orchestra members on their own – but maybe I am now stretching my theory of the supposed relationship between the visual images and the “text” just a little too far.

Even though Kempe’s widow Cordula records in the DVD booklet notes that her husband “thoroughly resented” being pigeonholed as a Strauss (and Wagner) specialist, his affinity with Strauss’s music was well recognised at the time. His record company EMI persuaded him to set down the complete orchestral works on disc. No less a personage than the Queen Mother reportedly gushed “Oh, Mr Kempe, when will you do the Alpine Symphony again?” (rather a surprise, given recent revelations of the sort of music she listened to at home). And, as evidenced in this performance taken from the conductor’s very last concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the 1974 Promenaders were quite over the moon with this Ein Heldenleben; critic Joan Chissell reported that this performance elicited “a hero’s ovation and rightly”.

Having never seen Kempe conduct live or on film before, the first thing that struck me was just how physically charismatic and animated he was on the podium. By fastidious, very precise gestures with both his baton and the fingers of his left hand, he coaxes some exquisite sonorities that we can fully appreciate thanks to his scrupulous care for orchestral balance - and to the installation of fibre-glass acoustic diffusing discs on the Royal Albert Hall’s ceiling just five years earlier, successfully reducing its notorious echo.

The outstanding characteristic of Kempe’s interpretation is that, by the application of both sensitivity and sensibility, he gives Strauss’s score the opportunity to breathe. This is, indeed, anything but a brash, bombastic account: the orchestra plays with notable and carefully controlled intensity and Erich Gruenberg’s substantial violin solos are especially affecting - he justifiably gets a special roar of approval from the Promenaders as he takes his bow.

If the Strauss is very fine indeed, the Dvorák is, however, outstanding. Edward Greenfield’s booklet notes suggest that its distinguishing feature is the wide range of dynamics that Kempe applies. What struck me most, however, was the interpretation itself. In contrast to performances that emphasise the score’s elements of cheery Bohemian bonhomie, Kempe’s is a deeply serious account.

The opening movement is characterised by fierce attack and precision - wonderful playing from the BBC orchestra - and Kempe minimises the elements of lyricism in favour high drama. In a similar vein, the second movement’s sentimentality is entirely played down. Its well-known “big tune” ( Goin’ home, Goin’ home, I’m a goin’ home / Quiet like, still some day, I’m just goin’ home) is moved purposefully along and the fervent manner in which its central section is played communicates, to this listener at least, a distinctly uneasy feeling of agitation and unrest.

Kempe’s interpretation is nothing if not consistently of a piece for the scherzo and the allegro con fuoco finale are similarly driven powerfully forward. The formers elements of bucolic rusticism are given short shrift and the latter, right from its opening bars, emerges as a real daredevil ride and is terribly exciting - while still very skilfully controlled and crafted.

This New World is one that emerges as a real eye-opener and a very different work from the one that we’re usually presented with. It justifiably receives a huge ovation from the audience.

This new DVD, then, preserves some superb performances. The direction – originally for BBC TV - is expert and thus almost entirely unobtrusive, the visual image - in colour throughout - is sharp and pleasing and the sound is more than acceptable. It offers an opportunity to acquaint or reacquaint oneself with a conductor of the highest calibre, performing live and at the peak of his abilities.

-- Rob Maynard, MusicWeb International

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London on 26 July 1973 (Rachmaninov), Fairfield Hall, Croydon on 24 April 1977 (Prokofiev), and at the Royal Festival Hall, London on 25 November 1971 (Bernstein)

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

A multitalented conductor, Previn leads the LSO in the first performance of Rachmaninov’s The Bells at the BBC Proms with celebrated soloists Sheila Armstrong, Robert Tear and John Shirley-Quirk. All three performances on this DVD were recorded during Previn’s eleven year tenure as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, from which he received a Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.

The ICA Classics Legacy series presents a collection of historic performances by some of the world’s greatest artists. These performances are released on DVD for the first time, incorporating rare archive footage that has been expertly and lovingly restored. - ICA Classics

RACHMANINOFF The Bells. 1 PROKOFIEV Alexander Nevsky 2 • Evgeny Svetlanov, cond; 1 Daniil Shtoda (ten); 1 Elena Prokina (sop); 1 Sergei Leiferkus (bs); 2 Alfreda Hodgson (mez); 1 BBC SO & Ch; 2 Philharmonia O & Ch • ICA ICAC 5069 (78:30) Live: London 1 4/19/2002, 2 1/30/1988


Sometimes, archive recordings have the air of, “Well, as long as we have access to it, let’s release it on CD.” Some of ICA Classics’s BBC discs have presented fairly unexceptional music-making, to say the least. Here, though, we have one absolutely fabulous performance ( The Bells ) and one very good one ( Alexander Nevsky ), and I would even give them preference over Svetlanov’s studio recordings of these same works.


With gorgeous live sound to boot, this version of The Bells really rings my chimes, so to speak. This is a work that stands or falls with the quality of the chorus. When I first auditioned this disc, I was unaware that I was not hearing a native Russian group; that’s how good the BBC Symphony Chorus is here. Furthermore, some recordings of this work content themselves with wimpy or emotionally anonymous soloists. Tenor Daniil Shtoda, on the other hand, displays brilliance of both sound and temperament, and the first movement, depicting the silver sleigh bells of youth, has great élan. Sergei Leiferkus is appropriately mournful in the funereal fourth movement; as with Shtoda, familiarity with the language and the style pays off. I am less impressed with soprano Elena Prokina, who is affected by what used to be called a “Slavic wobble,” but even she convinces this listener with the involvement of her singing. Svetlanov tended to get slower as he got older. Here, though, he never drags, and he points up the contrasts between the four movements with vivid color and attention to mood. The booklet note indicates that he looked frail on this occasion, and in fact, he died just a few weeks later. There’s nothing infirm about his conducting here, though.


The sound in Alexander Nevsky is more recessed and even a little muffled, although not fatally so. It doesn’t shoot the performance in the foot, but of course this is music that benefits from as much sonic realism as engineers, live or in the studio, can muster. Svetlanov is more introspective here. I get the feeling that he was trying to purge the score of its inherent vulgarity without cutting down on its excitement. If that was the case, he largely succeeded. The Philharmonia Chorus can’t hide its Englishness (for better or worse) and mezzo Alfreda Hodgson is rather maternal in her sixth-movement solo. Still, there is a lot to like here. In some ways, this is like André Previn’s EMI studio recording in its refusal to confuse weight with ponderousness, its avoidance of bombast, and its rather sensitive demeanor. (I recently discovered the Previn on an English EMI LP, and it immediately moved to the top of my list, so my comparing Svetlanov to Previn is meant as high praise.) It’s better than Svetlanov’s harshly recorded and only superficially exciting Soviet-era studio recording.


No sung texts are included, but do you really need them? The booklet note includes an interesting bit of trivia: As a child, Svetlanov appeared onstage in the role of Trouble in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly . He also made, according to annotator Colin Anderson’s reckoning, more than 3,000 recordings for Russian, Japanese, French, British, and Dutch companies. And you thought Neeme Järvi made a lot of CDs!


I’d get this if I were you.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

Piano enthusiasts drawn to Shura Cherkassky's charismatic and capricious artistry will find the previously unpublished Cologne radio broadcasts contained on this release both valuable and fascinating. A 1970 Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody reveals Cherkassky's generally lyrical approach to the piano part, and his fondness for spontaneous dynamic inflections and rounding off phrases. For the most part, tempos are slow to the point of sedate (Variations 12 through 14 particularly drag), although there are moments when the performance perks up and Cherkassky's cream-coated filigree becomes energized, such as in Variation 15 and the group of four following the famous Variation 18. I suspect that the overly resonant acoustic contributes to the performance's less than incisive impression.

The solo selections date from between 1951 and 1953 and include a relaxed yet compelling, individually shaped Prokofiev Seventh sonata (a work Cherkassky otherwise did not record) that markedly differs from Horowitz's driving intensity. Cherkassky apparently coached Stravinsky's Three Scenes from Petrushka with the composer, yet I've never been convinced by the pianist's slow and clunky way with the Danse Russe, although his soft pedal effects throughout the Shrove-Tide Fair add appreciable color and character to a movement that others play with more bravura and power.

However, the Rachmaninov Polka de V.R. and Rameau/Godowsky Tambourin show off Cherkassky's tonal palette at its best, along with his scampering élan and effortless passagework in Chabrier's Bourée fantasque, another work new to the pianist's discography. For Cherkassky fans, the Prokofiev and Chabrier alone are worth the price of this disc.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

CHOPIN Les Sylphides. 1 DÉLIBES Coppélia. 2 ADAM Giselle: act 2 pas de deux 3 • 1 Julia Farron, 1,2 Nadia Nerina, 1 Philip Chatfield, 2 Donald Britton, 2 Robert Helpmann, 3 Margot Fonteyn, 3 Rudolf Nureyev, dancers; 1 Robert Irving, cond; 2 John Lanchberry, cond; 3 Marcus Dods, cond; 1 Philharmonia O. 2 London SO. 3 Pro Arte O • ICA CLASSICS 5058, mono (DVD: 99:46)


Here are three productions—well, actually two and a quarter—performed by stars of the Royal Ballet in the BBC studios between 1956 ( Les Sylphides ) and 1962 (the Giselle pas de deux), but the quality of both the productions and the dancing are quite variable. Due to its rough condition—grainy picture, too dark lighting, and muffled, distorted sound—the Sylphides has fared the worst. Moreover, and this may have been exacerbated by the lighting, the costumes worn by the ballerinas are too full in both the skirting and the bust (there’s too much tulle in the former), which makes them look both bottom and top-heavy (which they are not). Also, for whatever reason, the dancing is not very good. Julia Farron, in the Prelude, is out of synch with the corps when they are together and shockingly clumsy in her solo turn, and Nadia Nerina looks a bit lumpy as well as reserved. Moreover, as dark as the lighting of this production was, it didn’t help that the choreography had her dance off-camera towards stage right! Only Philip Chatfield comes across well, but his dancing is only barely good, at least what you can see in the horrible lighting that looks like most of the stage lights went out! Unless you recall seeing this production either on TV when you were a child, or better yet in person, and want to see it again, it just isn’t worth watching.


But then we get to Coppélia, an entirely different ball of wax. Nerina dances here, too, this time as Swanilda, and it’s an understatement to say that she is better in this production. You almost can’t believe your eyes that this is the same dancer who just barely got through her turn in Sylphides. She is not only technically superior here, but far more exuberant and full of life. In her scene as the “fake” Olympia, her dancing is simply spellbinding; her entrechats are superb, she achieves wonderful elevation, and the overall grace of her dancing almost leads one to think she is soaring. But everyone is excellent in this production, from Robert Helpmann’s magnificent Coppelius to Donald Britton’s Franz to the corps either in whole or part. I was particularly thrilled by the choreography of the first-act mazurka, and small wonder: the Royal Ballet brought in a Polish dance ensemble to help them out in this scene! But best of all is the way the entire company actually looks as if they’re having a ball dancing this piece and the exceptional TV direction of Margaret Dale. Just to give you an idea of how highly I thought of this production, not only from the perspective of the dancing but as a theatrical presentation, it had the look of a truly exceptional silent film—and that is the highest compliment I can pay to it. Of course, anyone who has seen Helpmann’s impersonation of Coppelius in the classic 1951 film version of Tales of Hoffmann will know how good he was in this role, whether doing the opera or the ballet, but it’s a high compliment to the entire company that, here at least, his work complements but does not overshadow the others.


I’ve never been a fan of Giselle and never will be: to me, it’s an extraordinarily boring, silly ballet, full of banalities in both the music and the plot, which even the greatest dancers never seem to overcome, and here we have arguably the two greatest dancers of their time performing its pas de deux. Nureyev was just one year removed from his Royal Ballet debut as Duke Albrecht, and of course Fonteyn was his partner in that production as well. Here she is just a shade less perfect than usual—her arm, and then her leg, actually move a bit while holding a pose—but when you watch them together, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. They complemented each other so flawlessly that, watching his poses when she is going into an extension and then observing both together, it almost creates the illusion of one four-legged dancer in perfect synchronization. You also tend to forget just how strong Nureyev was: he lifts her so effortlessly that it looks as if she is floating on a wire and not just being supported by him, and her friezes are so perfect that it looks as if she was a mannequin in his arms. It almost beggars belief that Fonteyn was about 44 years old at the time, an age at which most ballerinas are long retired. Re-watching her, one realizes that it was the charm of her presence and the perfection of form that drew such adulation from audiences and critics; certainly, Fonteyn never could create a really exuberant or humorous character onstage. Sometimes you wonder how great she would have been in more modern ballets, or choreographies, where abstraction is the goal, for she was the perfect Dancing Machine (possibly a pas de deux de machina? ).


Highly recommended for the Coppélia, which is the greatest production of it I’ve ever seen, and for those spectacular moments in the Giselle scene. As for the Sylphides, if you can watch it more than once and derive pleasure from it, you’re stronger than I am.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

This release has been sourced from the Richard Itter archive of 'live' recordings. The collection is very important for collectors because it has never been released before onto the market. Following the archive's launch in October 2017 with releases featuring Beecham, Bohm, Cantelli, Karajan, du Pre, Klemperer and Rostropovich, it has received universal praise from both the classical media and record collectors for the excellent sound and performances. Celebrated violinist Yehudi Menuhin was very familiar with the Mozart Concertos, and played all seven including the spurious No. 6. These 'live' performances reflect Menuhin's Mozart playing during a single month in 1956 where he performed all the composer's major works with orchestra. Menuhin brings great insight and experience to every concerto and his intonation which became a concern in later life is spot on with these performances.

MOZART Symphony No. 39. TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4. DEBUSSY Trois Nocturnes: Fêtes • Georg Solti, cond; Chicago SO • ICA 5100 (DVD: 131:00) Live: London 2/2/1985

This concert was the last one presented by the Chicago Symphony under Georg Solti during its fifth European tour. If the orchestra’s first appearance in Britain (in Edinburgh in 1971) was something of a vindication for Solti following the stormy tenure he endured at Covent Garden, this one was now part of a well-practiced drill for both conductor and orchestra as conquering victors making a triumphal appearance to receive duly awaited laurels. By this time, only the orchestras of Berlin, Vienna, and the Concertgebouw could seriously presume to contest the claim of the CSO to be the world’s greatest orchestra. If the latter two could at least boast of having a more beautiful sheen of sound, none of them could match the CSO under Solti for sheer precision and brilliance of execution.

Given that, it is a bit of a surprise to encounter in Mozart’s 39th Symphony that opens this program some metrical imprecision in the downward cascading runs of the introduction to the first movement, which lack a clear sense of where the downbeat is. After that minor slip, the performance rights itself under Solti and moves forward with great efficiency. While Solti uses a reduced orchestra with a 12-10-8-6-4 string section deployment, the sound is still quite full compared to those from present-day period instrument ensembles. The interpretation is stylish and well proportioned, though a bit straightforward and lacking the extra lyricism and warmth that a Bruno Walter or Karl Böhm would have brought to it. In short, it is a good performance but not a great one.

The Tchaikovsky Fourth is another matter. In a previous review in 34:4 of a DVD featuring Kurt Sanderling, I complained of both the paucity and quality of available Tchaikovsky Fourths in the DVD medium. This performance corrects the problem in spades. Solti was a superb Tchaikovsky interpreter, one who brought a great tensile strength to the composer’s scores that minimized their structural lacunae and did not overindulge their heart-on-sleeve emotionalism. Here the first movement, with its “Sword of Damocles” motif of Fate, which in lesser hands can seem overly prolix or mawkish, is channeled with a propulsive fury that at the same time does not slight the contrasting interludes of almost balletic grace, the latter being rendered with a delicacy that belies critics who accuse Solti of insensitively running roughshod over every score. Even more surprisingly, the succeeding Andantino is taken at a quite leisurely tempo, with noticeably more rubato and ritards than Solti was wont to employ. The Scherzo likewise is taken at a pace a bit slower than I would have expected, with just a touch of rhythmic stiffness that is my only and minor criticism of this performance. The Allegro con fuoco Finale is indeed fiery, if not taken at quite the hell-for-leather pace of Yevgeny Svetlanov, my benchmark for this work, and the main section dovetails nicely into the coda with the return of the “Damocles” motif. The audience quite properly goes wild immediately after the closing chord, vociferously yelling its approval over tumultuous applause.

“Brilliant” and “sizzling” are not normally the first adjectives that come to mind for performances of Debussy’s music, but they certainly apply to this encore performance of “Fêtes” from the Trois Nocturnes. I for one would never have pegged Solti as a Debussy conductor of the first rank, but he is absolutely terrific here. This rendition positively crackles with drive and bounce; every note, every instrumental part is detailed with stunning clarity and gleaming color, with an unexpectedly witty close to boot. Once again, the audience roars its approval. What a shame not to have the complete Trois Nocturnes from Solti here!

The DVD opens with a three-minute spiel from ICA Classics touting its series of releases from British archives and the Boston Symphony archives. The camerawork is sensible, and the visual resolution is fine; the one drawback is that the recorded sound is very dry, which robs the Tchaikovsky Fourth in particular of some desirable tonal luster. Highly recommended, then, for the Tchaikovsky and Debussy items.

FANFARE: James A. Altena

Herbert von Karajan and the Philharmonia Orchestra sometimes had a tense working relationship, especially during the period of their US tour in the autumn of 1955 and the beginning of their European one in January 1956. Yet, as these live broadcasts repeatedly demonstrate, that tension resulted in music-making of astonishing power, scorching intensity and unrivalled beauty. The tensions became a trend in Karajan’s later career, too. It happened with the Vienna Philharmonic at Salzburg in the mid-1960s, and it happened again towards the very end of his tenure with the Berlin Philharmonic, but rarely were the results as magical as those he achieved in the 1950s with the Philharmonia.

Karajan and Tchaikovsky have never struck me as particularly suited to one another (all of his studio recordings have, in one way or another, left me wondering if he really understood the music). And this really goes to the root of the Karajan problem for many listeners: There are two Karajans, one bound to the precisions of the recording studio, the other completely – and unidiomatically – improvising on the concert platform. I find many live Karajan performances to have such a deep sense of inner conflict it is almost impossible to take any one performance out of the context of what preceded it, and this is certainly true of the 1955 Tchaikovsky Fourth we have here. We do not have the Sibelius Fourth which came before it, but the turbulence, urgency, passion and drama of the Tchaikovsky are uncommonly vivid; it is a performance that is as much about the composer as it is about the conductor.

Karajan struggled with Sibelius’s Fourth throughout his career (indeed, he rarely programmed the symphony), and the only live recording I have ever heard of him doing the work (in January 1978, released on Fachmann or, more readily available, on Palexa) is the most devastating and bleak performance imaginable (not unlike his remarkable Philharmonia studio recording of the work). Karajan drives the Philharmonia in the Tchaikovsky into quite dark territory – climaxes are more like moments of crisis, the instrumental narrative seems closer to a psychological confession, and though there is much beauty to the phrasing and playing, it is so taut and angular as if the music has been stitched together with razor wire. There are eruptions in this performance that are dazzling, and the virtuosity is just on the side of effortless. It is fluid, yet volcanic, without sounding mannered as Karajan sometimes could be under studio conditions. And the improvisation he manages is replicated by players who are given the space to phrase their notes with genuine character, though the interpretation is not for one moment stretched out or slow. One can certainly listen to this Tchaikovsky Fourth on its own terms, though given how radically different it is to any of his studio recordings, how much darker and more tragic it sounds, the bleakness of the unknown Sibelius hangs over Karajan’s performance of it like none other by this conductor, in my view. It is absolutely compelling, and shattering.

The Philharmonia were always exceptional in French music – and the Ravel which completes the first CD is ravishing. It is not just the precision of the playing which is so marvellous, it is the breath-taking quality of their dynamic range. The mezzo forte of the opening Prélude is beyond criticism, as are the gloriously muted strings of the Philharmonia. For a conductor who could sometimes seem passive and ambivalent about rhythm, the flamenco and Habanera are rather sensual, and the Feria is a joy.

The second CD of this set is given over to a Mozart concert from 6th February 1956, the last concert the Philharmonia gave with Karajan as part of their European Mozart bi-centenary tour. The ‘Haffner’ had opened the huge programme of three symphonies, which included the Tchaikovsky Fourth, back in July 1955, and here we have the work again, coupled with the great Clara Haskil in the K488 and Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’, a symphony which Karajan seemed to have abandoned in the studio during his late August 1953 recording sessions with the orchestra at Kingsway Hall (a Beethoven Fifth suffered a similar fate the same month). Karajan’s Mozart certainly could not be called HIP, though these Philharmonia performances are much less imposing than live recordings from either Berlin or Salzburg. This is not just because the sound of the Philharmonia is so much leaner, and more tensile; Karajan himself is much more flexible than he later became in Mozart. The K488 with Haskil, a pianist of extraordinary sensitivity, which in part was necessitated by her physical frailty, is intensely poetic – very different from the masculine, urbane recording that Karajan and the Philharmonia made with Gieseking in 1951. The two Mozart symphonies are both beautifully played, fleet enough with tempos to just escape sounding heavy.

These are important additions to Karajan’s Philharmonia discography, in more than tolerable sound. One sometimes has to remember that the Philharmonia Orchestra was principally founded to make recordings and concerts came a distant second. Karajan, it seems, only conducted the orchestra about a hundred times in concert (from 1948 to 1960) – less than twenty of those concerts being in London, and six at the Edinburgh Festival. The rest were conducted in Europe and the United States. Whilst a Don Juan, from Turin, and a Tallis Fantasia, from Naples, both from the October 1954 European tour exist, little else does. The Tchaikovsky we have here is stunning, the Haskil Mozart a minor miracle… but I do rather think one would have killed to get hold of a live Philharmonia/Karajan Sibelius Fourth too!

– MusicWeb International (Marc Bridle)

This release has been sourced from the Richard Itter archive. After twelve years of negotiation, ICA Classics has signed an exclusive long term agreement with the Lyrita Recorded Edition who are responsible for Richard Itter Trust. The collection is very important for collectors because it has never before been released. Despite there being a large number of Otto Klemperer recordings on the market, these Richard Itter tapes of live broadcasts from the Royal Festival Hall and the BBC’s Studios in Maida Vale between 1955 and 1956 have never, as far as is known, been released before. Klemperer was always more exciting when caught live and had added urgency as compared to his studio accounts, particularly at this time before his health deteriorated in later years. His Philharmonia concerts were hugely successful in the mid 50s when Walter Legge was looking to replace Herbert von Karajan who was in the process of leaving for the Berlin Philharmonic. As Richard Osborne states in his notes: “The winter of 1955-56 marked a new dawn for Klemperer.”

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REVIEWS:

Klemperer’s Mozart may sound a bit heavy-handed and brusque. On the other hand, the performances are refreshingly direct, projecting exemplary clarity of texture with the wind instruments really cutting through the orchestral tuttis to impressive effect. Likewise, the performance of Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 is really compelling, a good sense of structural cohesion working in tandem with great expressivity and rhythmic precision.

– BBC Music Magazine

Viewed overall, what we have here is the Klemperer we already know and love but granted wings and, trust me, you can tell the difference almost straight away.

– Gramophone