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KEILBERTH

FLYING DUTCHMAN  

Astrid Varnay 

Transfers by Andrew Rose

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REVIEW
"This performance was always arresting even in mono but now it veritably leaps out of the speakers... This live Bayreuth set is now clearly top of the heap."
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PACO 062 - Wagner  

We can now hear the long-awaited new Obert-Thorn transfers of these classic recordings and the wait has been generously rewarded.
 
The Grieg Suite is exemplary not least for the passion Ormandy brings to every bar of Grieg's music; not least the extraordinary Morning Mood and the savagery of In the Hall of the Mountain King. All very grown-up.
 
Ormandy's Sibelius is amongst the very finest. His Sony Classics coupling of Symphonies 2 and 7 is outstanding. His late flowering recordings for EMI made in the late 1970s were set down in The Old Met Hall in Philadelphia. His Lemminkainen Suite made in February 1978 reminded Sibelians everywhere what a force in the land was Ormandy and his orchestra. That recording should be a permanent catalogue presence. It was reissued as CDM5651762 then in 2007 on Encore. I was able to compare the two versions.
 
First of all this version (also issued some years ago by Haydn House as SDA 2003-364) is mono. Ormandy placed the Swan second in the sequence in 1978 but third in the 1950s though that has been remedied here. Interestingly Ormandy in 1978 is generally slower than he was a quarter century before. Lemminkainen the ardent lover flits desperately from maiden to maiden on the isle of Saari in 1951 - at the sort of breakneck speed we expect from Beecham's version of Lemminkainen's Return - speed-dating or what? In 1978 he took things at a more measured pace. Perhaps the maidens appreciated this. His Swan takes only 26 seconds longer in 1978 and is otherwise very similar. My how he makes the trembling strings sing (9.00) in 1951. There is a distinct cough at 00.26 in Lemminkainen's Return as well as a roaring and romping pesante gruffness. At 4.27 onwards Ormandy demands and gets visceral acceleration. Even so there's complete reliability from the Fabulous Philadelphians. It's breathtaking - almost unbelievable. This is the way Golovanov might have done it. A toweringly great Return and the same goes for the Saari poem not that the other two tione poems are anything less than remarkable.  

Indispensable Sibelius but the same goes for the two other Sibelius Pristine Ormandy discs: Symphonies 4/5 and tone poems.
   

A  Lemminkainen Suite to remind us of Ormandy's Sibelian fire and of why he was rated so highly by the composer himself.  

PASC 299 - Ormandy

This, the second CD in Pristine's series of live recordings from Sir Thomas Beecham's stint as music director of the Seattle Symphony, is arguably the more valuable; its contents consist of two major works, neither one of which Beecham recorded in the studio. Readers are referred to Fanfare 34:1, where I described the circumstances under which these recordings were made, and the heroic measures Pristine's Andrew Rose has taken in restoring them to some semblance of listenability.

Dvořák was one of the composers whose work Beecham championed; his studio recordings, however, include none of the most popular compositions, but rather three items-the Slavonic Rhapsody No. 3, The Golden Spinning Wheel, and the Symphonic Variations-that were virtually unknown at the time. The first two of these were premiere recordings. (He also recorded two of the Legends from Dvořák's op. 59 in 1935.) A live 1959 version of the Eighth Symphony was issued by HMV, and is currently available on BBC Legends 4154.

Despite his reputation for eccentricity, and even for artistic intransigence, Beecham was also known as an accommodating accompanist. So, the idiosyncrasies in this performance of the Cello Concerto must rest mostly at the feet of the soloist. Mischel Cherniavsky was a Ukrainian-born cellist, a member of a prominent piano trio along with his two brothers from 1901 through 1934, and a citizen of Canada, although he lived there only briefly. His brother Jan, however, the trio's pianist, settled in Vancouver, which may explain Mischel's appearance in nearby Seattle. In any event, Cherniavsky's tempos are highly irregular, with many gear shifts and rubatos. In contrast to Beecham's vigorous opening tutti, the cello entrance in the first movement is quite deliberate, and the big second tune is taken much more slowly. Tempos are similarly elastic in the finale, where the soloist doesn't always concern himself with staying in sync with the orchestra! All told, at more than 42 minutes, it's a very expansive reading of the concerto; Piatigorsky's more-or-less contemporary studio version with Ormandy totals about 36:30. The 42 minutes, incidentally, do not include a highly unfortunate gap: the closing tutti of the first movement, which the recordist (using acetate discs) didn't get. Otherwise, Cherniavsky does a reasonably creditable job with the demanding solo part, although he certainly doesn't belong to the ranks of top-flight soloists.

Beecham's devotion to Mendelssohn's music is well documented, but he never committed the "Scottish" Symphony to disc. His reading of this piece, at least on that October day in 1943, is energetic-including some of the shouts for which live Beecham performances are legendary-and no-nonsense. The first-movement Allegro is brisk; a typical Beecham moment is the phrasing in the cellos leading into the recapitulation. The tempo of the scherzo is uncompromising, and the Adagio third movement never dawdles. Even the grand coda to the symphony is unsentimental, and moves energetically to the end. This recording unfortunately has three gaps, one leading into the first-movement coda, a bigger gap in the scherzo, and another at the opening of the finale.

Finally, it must be said that the wartime Seattle Symphony was a far cry from the orchestras Beecham founded in England and conducted in most of his recordings: the London Philharmonic (from 1932 to 1940 and for a brief period in 1944-45) and the Royal Philharmonic (from 1946 to 1959, the year of his last recordings at age 80). In particular, the solo wind writing in the Dvořák exposes some serious weaknesses that Beecham would not have tolerated under normal circumstances.

As with the first volume, these recordings sound unbelievably good considering their age and the source (a cassette dub of a second-generation open-reel dub of the original acetates, which themselves were probably taken down from an AM broadcast). Still, allowances need to be made, especially for those gaps. If these sonic drawbacks don't scare you away, you'll find these to be fascinating documents of performances the likes of which you simply don't hear anymore.   

PASC 238 - Beecham

Pristine Audio here applies its sound enhancement techniques to classic Fauré performances featuring a pianist who had a close personal association with the composer, as well as other eminent French instrumentalists of bygone eras. For lovers of Fauré's music, this release is self-recommending. I am not familiar with any prior CD reissues of this material, and for the Piano Quartet No. 1 and Ballade none appear to be currently available. The Piano Quartet No. 2 is available in a four-disc Cascavelle set devoted to the artistry of pianist Marguerite Long, but I have not heard this release. I do have a French EMI LP of the First, recorded in 1956, which I acquired a decade later. The LP is not bad, but Pristine's sound is altogether more vivid, with a great improvement in spaciousness and detail and a notable extension of frequency range as well. The string tone is also smoother, although a touch of nasality occasionally intrudes. What distinguishes this performance from later renditions with which I am familiar is its unbroken singing line and unpressured sense of flow. The elegance of this approach does not preclude deep feeling and intensity, as in the elegiac third movement, or the requisite energy in the finale.

The Second was recorded under especially difficult circumstances on May 10, 1940, with German bombs falling on Paris and the Wehrmacht thrusting into the Netherlands on its way to crushing France. Perhaps the desperate situation contributed to the passionate intensity of this performance, and also to the occasional minor technical lapses on the part of the string players. Their frequent use of portamento marks this recording as belonging to an earlier age, as does the comparative shallowness of the soundstage and the less full-bodied string tone. Still, in Pristine's treatment this recording offers comparatively open and realistic sound for its time. This forceful expression of French musical culture is especially poignant in the light of what was about to happen to the country.

The Ballade was one of Long's signature pieces, and she recorded it five times. Her 1930 recording is available in the Cascavelle set mentioned above. Pristine's Andrew Rose comments on the technical difficulties he encountered in restoring the 1950 recording he chose for this release, but the results are an unqualified success, with clear, solid piano tone and a full and bright orchestral sound. As in the other works on this disc, Long's pianism seems flawless, sensitive, expressive, and brilliant as the context requires. It is hard to see how this perfectly idiomatic performance of the Ballade could be bettered.

And so, another triumph for Andrew Rose. If you love these works, get this release.   

PACM 076 - Long