After the second world war, Klemperer never resumed the central place in Berlin's artistic life that he had held when Director of the Kroll Opera House between 1927 and 1931. His late career was centred more on London, Amsterdam, Vienna and Budapest rather than Berlin. Klemperer conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for a few engagements in the 1950s, but his main Berlin appearances during that decade were with the RIAS Symphony Orchestra (later called the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and now known as the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin). Audite have conveniently brought together the surviving recorded evidence of this partnership, mainly devoted to the classical repertoire. Almost everything Klemperer performed with Berlin Radio forces is included except for the Clock Symphony, which preceded the live 1956 account of Mahler's Fourth Symphony: the tape of the Haydn was scrubbed. Live performances (some with applause) are interspersed with studio accounts. The performances are edited from the original RIAS tapes (nowadays Deutschlandradio Kultur). Some of these recordings have been released previously, but this set is superior in all respects to earlier releases.

The second volume of Peter Heyworth's biography of Klemperer (Otto Klemperer – his life and times, Cambridge University Press, 1996), which has detailed information on the conductor's concert appearances, barely mentions these performances. The implication is that the Berlin outings were minor affairs within the totality of Klemperer's post-war career. A different perspective is offered in Habakuk Traber's booklet notes. These provide a detailed interpretative commentary on the performances, concluding that they "surely rank amongst the most important documents of cultural rebuilding in post-war Germany." These opposing positions are, to my mind, both incorrect. The performances were worth issuing because they illuminate Klemperer's conducting practice in his core repertoire. This suggests that Heyworth was remiss in giving them short shrift. On the other hand, Traber's case is one of special pleading. While the recordings are musically valuable, they can hardly be said to occupy the cultural position he ascribes to them.

The Mozart recordings were all made within a few days in late 1950. They document Klemperer's first encounter with the RIAS Symphony Orchestra. Listeners expecting to hear the conductor's late monumental style and steady pacing in these works will be surprised at the swiftness of some tempi. The main Allegro of the Don Giovanni overture and the first movement of the Prague Symphony, for example, are both bracing. All the Mozart performances are strongly led, but Symphony No. 29 is less ebullient than one usually hears today and the strings of the Serenata notturna compete with booming timpani. In these performances, one senses thar Klemperer and the orchestra have just become musically acquainted. The strings play with keen, precise articulation and contrapuntal passages are deftly handled; but the overall ensemble is not as polished as one remembers from the orchestra's recordings with its then music director, Ferenc Fricsay. The steely sound of the tuttis is wearing on the ears, though the recordings capture a wide dynamic range.

The three Beethoven symphonies are all live recordings. They are similar in conception to Klemperer's various other accounts of these works. The Second Symphony proceeds boldly, with careful attention to wind solos that often take a thematic lead in this work. The Eroica is suitably weighty, grave, and structurally cogent. In the "Marcia funebre", the orchestra seems to be playing slighty quicker than Klemperer's beat and, as the booklet note points out, the ensemble becomes slightly ragged. The finale is classically cogent and Klemperer eschews playing the variations as a virtuous showpiece, much to the music's advantage. The Pastoral is gently bucolic in the first two movements. Klemperer then whips up a dramatic storm followed by an energetic rather than a serene finale. Though they make for interesting listening, none of the Beethoven performances is truly outstanding and the conductor's credentials in these symphonies are better displayed in his Philharmonia studio recordings.

The soloist in Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto is Hans-Erich Riebensahm, a Berlin-based pianist, teacher and Schnabel pupil, whom some listeners may recall from his LP of Beethoven's Pathétique and Appassionata sonatas (Opera 1174). The booklet note supplies no information about him, which is an oversight given his low profile among recording artists. His performance of the Beethoven is certainly worth hearing. He is in accord with Klemperer's spacious tempi in the first movement and delivers a forthright cadenza, which is marred by a few wrong and smudged notes. In the second movement Riebensahm offers a hushed, intimate reading, and carefully shades his arpeggios to allow the flute and bassoon to project their solos. In the finale, he plays lyrically while Klemperer's accompaniment is somewhat abrupt, but this is not problematic because Beethoven's music partly suggests such a tension between the solo part and the tuttis.

Works by Hindemith and Mahler complete these discs. Klemperer of course knew both composers and also led premieres of their compositions. He preferred Hindemith's earlier works and felt an affinity with the ballet suite Nobilissima Visione. This performance of February 1954 is something of a dry run for Klemperer's Philharmonia recording of the work some eight months later. The serious and reflective string sonorities of the Hindemith are well projected in this Berlin performance, along with delicate woodwind playing in the second movement and confident brass chords in the finale. Klemperer was clearly attuned to the restrained warmth and orchestral invention of one of Hindemith's stronger pieces. Mahler Fourth is a suitably classically conceived interpretation of a work that Klemperer programmed frequently. Wistful passages of nostalgic playing are found in the first movement; bitter irony, conveyed through the retuned solo violin, dominates the second movement; the third movement flows peacefully. Despite the soprano's lack-Iustre singing in the finale, this is a well-proportioned, steady and idiomatic performance that provides an appropriate capstone to these recordings.

This new complete series of Grieg's orchestral music is building into a really excellent one. In the past, although there has been only one integral recording of Grieg's concert music by a Norwegian orchestra – the Bergen Philharmonic under Ole Kristian Ruud for BIS; and a really fine one it is, too (although I should confess I was responsible for its concept) – it is rare to hear this composer's music from a German orchestra. In this instance, Eivind Aadland is proving himself to be a major interpreter of his countryman's music.

Here, on Volume 2 of this projected five-disc set (I reviewed the first volume in the July/August issue), we have Grieg's complete music for string orchestra, with the exception of 'The Death of Åse' (from Peer Gynt), which has already appeared on Volume 1 (in the first Suite taken from the play's incidental music). As has become something of the norm in relatively recent years, it is encouraging to hear this music played by full string strength, rather than the chamber-musical number of players which so often used to be the case in recordings made from about 1970-2000.

Any doubts that might remain as to the 'authenticity' of the performances in the choice of a German orchestra are set at nought under Aadland's direction: as with Volume 1, he has clearly gone from first principles, and the results are enormously impressive. Indeed, in some respects they are rather more than that, for in the second of the utterly delightful Two Nordic Melodies, Op. 63 (the 'Cowkeeper's Tune and Country Dance', as they were once known in English-speaking countries), Aadland gets the opening gesture of the 'Country Dance' to be played without vibrato, imitating the natural sound of the Norwegian folk instrument, the Hardanger fiddle, as if tuning-up prior to the Dance itself. The result is utterly entrancing, a small but by no means insignificant aspect of this conductor's love for and desire to communicate this totally originaI music. We may hear a similar effect in the 'Norwegian' melody, the first of two from Op. 53; if anyone questions the 'rightness' of this, one may reply that Grieg, in the early 1890s and about the time of his fiftieth birthday, went by horse and cart around Norway collecting folk songs, a full ten years before the English folk-song movement began in this country, and at a time in Grieg's life when – an international figure – he had no need to do so.

By such modern interpretative means as we have noted, Aadland reveals the heart of this music in a completely new yet totally convincing manner. Another of his qualities is his insistence on giving each note its full length, which, in Grieg's slow string music, adds greatly to the expressive nature of these interpretations. Aadland is at all times unerring in adhering to the composer's demands in matters of phrasing and of internal string tone: the result is a most admirable recording, with the very familiar Holberg Suite being particularly pleasing; the conductor's tempos are excellent and all repeats are correctly observed.

The accompanying notes are also good and the recording quality is first-class, but it is odd to see a booklet in which the composer's dates are nowhere to be found. Nonetheless, this is a most impressive disc.

Nach der Vollendung der Schostakowitsch-Reihe nimmt sich das Mandelring Quartett...

The Mandelring Quartet, in concert or on disc, always achieves an instinctive...

The Berg Concerto was central to Christian Ferras’s repertoire. His EMI version is no longer listed here but – like the 24 London bus – three replacements have come at once. (Two actually, as both Orfeo and Testament have the same 1960 Salzburg performance; the one here, also live, is from 1964.) A victim of depression and alcohol dependence, Ferras took his own life aged 49. His early musicianship is shown here in the Beethoven: the execution is masterly for a teenager. Alas the opening motif of the Larghetto was excised back in 1951 and Audite has decided against reinstating it via bars 2-3 (the identical phrase).

Few music premieres have created such uproar as Le Sacre du printemps, given in Paris in 1913 under Pierre Monteux. Nowadays the score presents few problems either to conductors or orchestras; the same may be said of much 20th century music. But have we lost something along the way? It’s an argument often put by the critic Robert Layton – citing early recordings (such as those by Stravinsky) as evidence.

Look back 40 years to the 1961 Gramophone catalogue and there’s a substantial Bartók listing: six versions of the relatively popular Concerto for Orchestra, for instance – though none far better than the 1948 Decca 78rpm set by van Beinum. One name that recurs is that of the Hungarian conductor, signed to DG, Ferenc Fricsay. He was in charge of the RIAS Orchestra (Radio in American Sector, Berlin), with access to the Berlin Philharmonic for certain projects. Sessions were held in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, which had excellent acoustics. The classical director of the orchestra Elsa Schiller invited Fricsay to Berlin in 1948; later she would become a key figure in organising Deutsche Grammophon’s postwar repertory.

The German company Audite has now issued a 3CD set [21.407] from radio tapes duplicating most of the DG material but with different soloists, eg. Foldes in the Rhapsody; Kentner in the Third Piano Concerto [live]. A 1953 studio Second with Géza Anda adds to his live versions with Karajan, Boulez, et al. There’s no Concerto for Orchestra or First Piano Concerto, but Audite offers alternatives for the Second Violin Concerto (Tibor Varga) [live]. Cantata profana (Fischer-Dieskau/Krebs), Dance Suite, Divertimento for strings [live], Two portraits (Rudolf Schulz) and Music for strings, percussion and celesta.

These RIAS recordings were also made in the Berlin church; the live tapes are from the Titania-Palast. The booklet note veers from dry facts to contentious opinion!

Some tape!
We all know that, as Allied bombers were flying over Germany, radio engineers were still tinkering with stereo and were able to record on wire (precursor to tape). The tape quality on DG mono LPs has always amazed me and in this Audite set there’s a prime example with the Third Piano Concerto. The levels were set, frankly, far too high and with the soloist rather close. But even when the overload is obvious, somehow it still sounds ‘musical’.

This is the performance which stands out for me as most significant. Louis Kentner, born in Hungary (as Lajos), had come to the UK in 1935, marrying into the Menuhin family, and had, with the BBC SO under Boult, given the European premiere of this work – they recorded it the very next day, in February 1946.

A Liszt specialist, he plays here with total aplomb, notably in the counterpoint of the finale. The ‘night music’ section of the Adagio religioso, instead of bristling with insects and eery rustles, sounds more akin to a Beethoven scherzando. His touch put me in mind of something the composer had demonstrated to Andor Foldes: ‘This [playing one note on the piano] is sound; this [making an interval] is music.’ The last two notes of movements (ii) and (iii) here are very much musical statements. Notwithstanding the limitations of the 1950 source, many orchestral colours struck me anew. In sum: this may not be a version to introduce a listener to the concerto, but it’s a version those familar with it should on no account miss. And it illustrates perfectly the thesis that today’s smoother readings lose something indefinable yet essential.

Brilliant illumination
Fricsay died aged only 49. If you don’t know his musicianship, the intensity in the slow movement of the Divertimento here (far greater than on his DG version) will surely be a revelation. He appeared, said Menuhin, ‘like a comet on the horizon … no-one had greater talent.’

In den Jahren 1935 bis 41 hatten es sämtliche Künste in Deutschland sehr schwer, sich entfalten zu können – natürlich auch die Musik. Ob direkt betroffen wie der jüdische Komponist Pavel Haas oder emotional involviert wie Benjamin Britten – ihre Musik war geprägt von einer neuen Intensität und Intimität. Zu hören jetzt auf der neuen CD der Oboistin Birgit Schmieder, die sich gemeinsam mit Akiko Yamashita am Klavier mit dieser Zeit auseinander gesetzt hat.

Benjamin Britten: "The Wasp", aus "Two Insect Pieces" (2’00)

Gerade mal 22 Jahre alt war Benjamin Britten, als er 1935 seine „Zwei Insekten-Stücke“ für Oboe und Klavier schrieb – eins davon haben wir eben gehört: „Die Wespe“, eine kleine musikalische Fabel, die in all ihrer kompositorischen Ökonomie schon einiges von Brittens späteren stilistischen Merkmalen andeutet. Das allerdings mit überraschend viel Witz, der ansonsten in der Musik dieser düsteren Vorkriegsjahre nicht allzu verbreitet war. Paul Hindemith, der Schönberg-Schüler Nikos Skalkottas und der 1944 in Auschwitz getötete Pavel Haas – das sind die anderen Komponisten, denen sich die Oboistin Birgit Schmieder auf ihrer neuen CD widmet. Sechs Jahre, von 1935 bis 41, in denen sich die anbahnende Katastrophe in der Musik dieser direkt betroffenen Künstler widerspiegelt. Statt der großen Entwürfe im Stile Mahlers griffen sie allerdings eher auf intimere, kammermusikalische Formen zurück. Und gerade dabei kam der Oboe mit ihrer quasi menschlichen Stimme natürlich eine wichtige Rolle zu. Denn schon Hector Berlioz charakterisierte sie in seiner Instrumentationslehre mit den Worten: „Ihren Tönen ist Jungfräulichkeit, naive Anmut, stille Freude oder der Schmerz eines zarten Wesens angemessen“. Klangeigenschaften, die insbesondere Paul Hindemith in seinem umfangreichen „Sonatenwerk“ mehrfach gekonnt einsetzte, auch mit Hilfe des noch etwas schwermütiger wirkenden Englisch Horns. Auch dieses Werk aus seiner Exil-Zeit findet sich auf der CD „Temporal Variations“. Jetzt hören wir aber den ersten Satz aus seiner Sonate für Oboe und Klavier aus dem Jahr 1938. Es spielen Birgit Schmieder und Akiko Yamashita.

Paul Hindemith: Sonata for Oboe and Piano, 1. Satz (4’15)

Paul Hindemiths Sonate für Oboe und Klavier – Birgit Schmieder spielt auf ihrer neuen CD “Temporal Variations” Musik für dieses Instrument aus den Jahren 1935 bis 41.

Mehrchörigkeit war ein Markenzeichen der Musik alter venezianischer Meister. Da...

In recent years, Audite has released a series of recordings featuring the chamber and orchestral music of Eduard Franck (1817–93). This brand new SACD is the latest in a succession of discs that have given us the composer’s string quartets and sextets, piano trios, violin sonatas, two violin concertos, and two symphonies. Born in the Silesian province of Breslau, he was no relation to César Franck; indeed, he was neither Belgian nor French. He was, however, father to yet another Franck, Richard (1858–1938), whose works are also being attended to by Audite.

Not unlike Mendelssohn, with whom he studied, Eduard came from a financially secure and cultured family whose home attracted such visitors as Heine, Heller, Mendelssohn, and Wagner. Franck pursued parallel careers as pianist, teacher, and composer. In the last-named capacity, he was not as prolic as a number of his more famous contemporaries, and as a self-demanding fusspot, he resisted publishing his works until he had polished them to a high degree of perfection. This resulted in much of his output not becoming known until near the end of his life, by which time his very Mendelssohnian musical vocabulary and style had been largely eclipsed by Bruckner, Liszt, Brahms, and the Belgian-French Franck, César.

Eduard’s largest and most significant output falls into the category of chamber music, and being the chamber music maven I am, I’ve collected all of Audite’s previous Franck releases. Listening to them, as well as to this latest disc of string quintets, there are two things I can state unequivocally: (1) in a game of guess-the-composer, you would not be disgraced if you guessed Mendelssohn; and (2) if you love the chamber music of that ilk—and that would include not just Mendelssohn, but the likes of Joachim Raff, Franz Lachner, Niels Gade, Louise Farrenc, Mihály Mosonyi, and that school of mid-19th-century, post-Mendelssohn composers who remained relatively untouched by the influences of Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms—you will love Eduard Franck’s string quintets, as well as all of his other chamber works Audite has made available. I highly recommend them to you in toto.

The players listed in the headnote are so delightful, delectable, and delicious in these performances I could just eat them with a spoon. It’s hard to imagine this music being played more spontaneously and joyfully than it is here. The E-Minor Quintet’s quirky, Mendelssohnian Scherzo is gleeful and giddy, and the C-Major Quintet’s gorgeous and expansive first movement unfolds its fragrant melodies like the petals of a flower, each opening in turn to seek the sun.

Audite’s recording team has picked up the ensemble just right for this exceptionally clean, clear, and vibrant SACD. For those who tend to be skeptical if a piece of music was not written by a composer with a famous name, I can’t urge you too strongly to give Eduard Franck a listen. This is gloriously beautiful music beyond any telling of it.

La mise à disposition des répertoires musicaux les moins fréquentés...