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Brahms

A German Requiem 

Vivian della Chiesa
Herbert Janssen
The Westminster Choir
NBC Symphony Orchestra
Arturo Toscanini
  

Recorded 1945  

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PACO 050  

The first thing to be observed about all these recent releases from Andrew Rose's Pristine Audio label is that the sound quality achieved is second to none. Even the oldest recording is made to yield exceptional results, which is sure to delight both aficionado and newcomer alike. So whether your taste is for the familiar, such as Beethoven piano music played by Schnabel, or the unfamiliar, for instance Howard Hanson conducting Charles Griffes, you are certain to be delighted with the sonic results achieved by this label. In addition, as Andrew Rose has such a vast pool of out-of- copyright recordings from which to choose for remastering, one can generally be confident that the musical performances will always be of a very high standard. There are very few, if any, musical duds in the Pristine catalogue.

Thus the major point of both interest and distinctiveness is likely to lie in the choice of repertoire presented. This current crop contains recordings that are well-known as well as some rarities. Among the latter is the aforementioned Hanson disc, which brings together some early 1950s Mercury recordings with Hanson conducting the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra. The works featured are Roy Harris's Symphony No. 3, Griffes's The Pleasure Dome of Kuhla Khan and The White Peacock, Clouds, and Bacchanale, and Barber's First Symphony (® PASC315, 59mins). Hanson was a major leader for American music at this time, and his readings are uniformly excellent. The originally rather dry recorded sound has been opened out sympathetically. Rare Beecham repertoire is featured in another compendium disc, with Sir Thomas directing Richard Arnell's Punch and the Child, Delius's An Arabesque, and Lord Berners's The Triumph of Neptune (© PASC314, 59mins), all again hailing from the early 1950s. Musical inspiration is at a premium here, despite Beecham's best efforts, and so this CD does tend to outlive its welcome slightly, but if you want this repertoire, then it will not fail to please. 

Unusual repertoire for stringed instruments is a consistent feature of the Pristine Audio catalogue. Two good examples are in this current crop. The first brings together two major performances of concertos by Dvorak from the post-war era: Ida Haendel's account of the Violin Concerto, with Karl Rankl conducting the National Symphony Orchestra, which appeared originally on Decca 78s, and Enrico Mainardi playing the Cello Concerto for DG in 1955, with Fritz Lehmann directing the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The overall honours go fairly decisively to Haendel and Rankl, perhaps surprisingly, with Lehmann not always achieving the required head of steam, despite Mainardi's best efforts. Nonetheless this CD provides an interesting and worthwhile pairing of the two major Dvorak concertos for stringed instruments (® PASC308, 69mins). Now let's have the Piano Concerto! Any recording featuring the great English violinist Albert Sammons is sure to be of interest, and Pristine's new offering is no exception. It features Sammons playing the Elgar Violin Sonata in partnership with the pianist William Murdoch, recorded by Columbia in 1935. Set alongside this is the Rubbra Violin Sonata, recorded for HMV with Gerald Moore at the piano in 1946, towards the end of Sammons's career. Both performances have numerous points of interest and sound well. This programme is neatly rounded off with Sammons playing four salon pieces with a natural grace and ease (® PACM079, 55mins).

On the operatic front, Pristine fields a rarity and something a little more familiar. The rarity is a recording of Gounod's Paust, broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera on 19 December 1959, featuring Jussi Björling in a late appearance, singing opposite a young Elisabeth Söderström and the incomparable Cesare Siepi as Mephistopheles (® PAC0064, two discs, 156mins). The conductor is Jean Morel, who taught at Juilliard and was by reputation something of a martinet. The recording is taken from the LP issue published by Robin Hood Records, and is perfectly respectable in terms of both sound and performance. Björling enthusiasts will definitely want this recording if they do not have it already, but if you are after a good Paust it might be worth considering looking elsewhere. Similarly the extracts from Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg featuring the great Friedrich Schorr and recorded in performance at the Berlin State Opera on 22 May 1929 will be of interest both to Wagner mavens as well as Schorr admirers, rather than to the general listener (® PACO065, 79mins). The original recording has had fairly wide circulation on various EMI labels. Therefore a major point of interest in this particular reissue, produced and transferred by Mark Obert-Thorn, is the inclusion of two previously unpublished takes from an earlier staged performance given on 29 April 1929, one of which covers repertoire not present in the earlier selection, the duet between Sachs and Eva, "Sieh, Evchen! Dacht ich's doch, wo sie blieb!".

Pristine have made something of a niche for itself with the remastering and reissue of several complete piano cycles of note from the past. Their reissue of the Beethoven piano sonata cycle of Artur Schnabel has been well received, and it is useful to have as a valuable appendix the same pianist's complete account of the Beethoven Bagatelles (CD PAKM049, 71mins), in which Andrew Rose has worked from EMI's reissues on vinyl from the 1960s and 1980s. The results sound amazingly good, with none of the imperfections of the original 78 surfaces. Equally satisfying is Schnabels 1937 recording of the Diabelli Variations (® PAKM047, 71mins), once again transferred from EMI's own vinyl transfers. 

Now for two stalwarts from the mono catalogue of the early 1950s: Guido Cantelli conducting the Orchestra of La Scala, Milan, in Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and, with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the same composer's Romeo and Juliet (@ PASC316, 62mins). Both these recordings were pillars of the early EMI catalogue and hearing them duly refreshed in these fine transfers it is not hard to see why they were so successful. Lastly we have two excellent mono concerto recordings by Clifford Curzon: the Brahms First Piano Concerto with Eduard van Beinum conducting the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1953, and the Grieg Piano Concerto with Anatole Fistoulari directing the London Symphony Orchestra, from 1951. Both recordings stand as fitting tributes to one of this country's most outstanding musicians, and have been done full justice in Pristine Audio's excellent transfers (® PASC 312, 77mins).  

Producer and restoration engineer Mark Obert-Thorn has assembled three Beethoven studio sessions of Paul van Kempen (1893-1955), 1940-1941, taken from the German Polydor label. Kempen, a conductor raised in the heroic tradition of Willem Mengelberg and his Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, became noted for his deft attention to orchestral detail, complemented by a cultivated sense of musical architecture. His readings of the Tchaikovsky Fifth and Capriccio Italien on the Philips label, along with his natural affinity for the music of Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler, sustain Kempen's reputation. Beethoven collectors have long treasured his concerto cycle with pianist Wilhelm Kempff, and his Brahms B-flat Concerto with Adrian Aeschbacher maintains a kind of cult status for cognoscenti.

The opening excerpts from Beethoven's ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus (rec. 7 July 1941) conveys a rugged, virile energy, especially in the ballet music, in which brass, tympani, and strings achieve some mighty harmonies in brisk motion. Curious, that Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 elicited several German inscriptions from this fertile period in recording history: we have two potent readings from Fritz Lehmann and Paul van Kempen, to name but a pair. Kempen (April 1940) takes his cue from Mengelberg, but his approach bears fewer 19th Century atavistic practices in regard to tempo, phrasing, and rhythmic license. The broad cello line in the opening Adagio molto possesses singing energy and a dramatic sense of the figures as they move to fulfillment in the Allegro con brio. The latter section literally explodes with whistling excitement, the strings, woodwinds, and tympani in colossal motion, fervent and convinced of their collective mission.

The A Major Larghetto has reigned as the heart of this symphony, which Berlioz well admired. Kempen molds its delicate phrases in legato strings and hymnal winds with loving care, the phrases breathed in dramatically poised periods. The sustained pedal points achieve a muscular girth quite anticipatory of the Fifth Symphony, which shares honors in this fine restoration. A slight ritard or marcato infiltrates the tempo of the Scherzo, played for rustic lyricism rather than rough-house athletics. The tips of the violin bows bespeaks volumes about niceties of lithe articulation. Equally suave bassoon and French horn work in the Trio. The 2/2 Allegro molto rather hustles forward, yet it refuses to relinquish the naturally lyric buoyancy Kempen has established just by the minutest of rhythmic restraints. The influence of late Mozart, especially his K. 543, emerges at key points. The exquisite balances Kempen elicits from his excited, virtuoso  forces might well have been attributed to the equally classical tradition in the music-making of the more famous contemporaries Eugen Jochum and Erich Kleiber.

The Beethoven Fifth (7 July 1941), from the same session as the Prometheus, announces its forward drive from the outset of the Allegro con brio, Kempen's not opting for a halting sense of "profundity." That Kempen raised the Dresden Philharmonic's level of execution to stellar status has been long granted and finds ample testimony here. The textural alignments of differing masses of sound becomes a dramatic conflict as compelling as the organization and permutations of the ground-motif itself. The inevitability of the peroration rivals anything in the Germans' conducting catalogue of the period, from Furtwaengler to Abendroth.

The A-flat Major Andante con moto receives a broad treatment from Kempen, its double-theme and subsequent variants eventually allowing the four-note motif in the bass to exalt the suspensions to heroic proportions. The Dresden cello line sings elegantly, the triplet arpeggios in the violas luxurious. The woodwinds reassert their aerial transparency before the brass and tympani, in march like procession, move the music into heraldry. Kempen underplays the graduated crescendos as the music moves to a poised, eminently noble conclusion.  The melodic impulse dominates even the militant Allegro third movement, the interior counterpoint's moving at a brisk, articulate pace. The diaphanous pizzicati pursue their ineluctable course to the transition to the timpani and string crescendo to the jubilant C Major finale. How many seeds of the Seventh Symphony already burst forth in the lusty throes of the Fifth! Brilliant rocket figures from the Dresden string and wind choirs reaffirm the tempestuous bravura of Kempen's performance, perhaps unheralded in its own time, but now released with the quality of the sonic splendor its vision demands.

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