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It probably needn’t be said that these two works belong together like Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, the two one-act operas Metropolitan Opera fans used to call ham & eggs. But there is a certain reflective kinship that makes this Beethoven double bill particularly enjoyable—the composer free of his later angst but at the peak of his middle-period genius. The playing by all not only adds to that pleasure but gives the album its real distinction.

Backhaus and Bohm had been concerto partners, and friends, in the years before World War II (their two Brahms concertos remain popular reissues to this day on Naxos and Biddulph), and this reading of Beethoven 4 in 1950 Berlin was one of their first post-war get-togethers, if not the first reunion itself. Both were done for broadcast, the concerto before an audience in the Titania Palast, the symphony in a 1952 “studio” recording in the Jesus Christ Church, both places regularly favored by the Berlin Philharmonic. The RIAS Symphony was Ferenc Fricsay’s orchestra, which since 1948 he had quickly built into a first-rate ensemble. Berlin was still divided into East and West, and RIAS stood for Radio in the American Sector. Audite tells us that the sound heard here was drawn from the original broadcast reel-to-reel tapes. The result is very easy on the ears, though the treble is limited and the bass line is sometimes blurry.

The symphony is done in Bohm’s usual no-nonsense style, and is endearing. I do not know his later set of the Beethoven nine with the Vienna Philharmonic, but I would be surprised if the Vienna Fourth were as genial, as courtly even, as this one with the RIAS. It is one of Beethoven’s more mysterious works. Many a prominent conductor has foundered on its innocent shoreline, trying to lay on meaning and profundity that might have astonished the composer. Bohm seems to have succeeded by simply turning the music over to the orchestra. It often seems that way with Bohm. But it is of course never that simple. He works hard for it in rehearsal. The minuet (III) is perhaps the most charming thing in the performance. At the end of each section—the beginning minuet, the trio, and then the movement itself—Böhm introduces gentle retards that are not called for in the score but are certainly permissible and are like farewell curtsies of a bygone rococo era—and charming.

Wilhelm Backhaus brings one of the 20th Century’s great piano techniques to bear on the piano concerto, with electrifying results. He had a familiar ability to make every passage, every phrase, sound just right, ever so easy, fully at the service of the music. This was done without a hint of showing off, unless it be in a cadenza—but even there he seemed to stay cool. Over the years that glistening pearlywhite tone was ceaseless in its ability to pierce even the thickest of orchestral sonorities, though Beethoven’s discreet orchestrations do not present that kind of challenge. Nor does the man on the podium here.

There is one debatable interpretive moment that occurs right at the start with the piano’s delicate solo opening. Beethoven gives seemingly contradictory directions for this passage. The dots over the piano’s notes are the familiar indication that the composer wants the music played staccato, or detached. But he also writes p, for soft, and dolcefor sweet. Is it possible to do both? Backhaus clearly favors the staccato approach, though he does his best to be quiet about it. Going back to Leon Fleisher’s 1959 recording with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra (most recently on Sony 48165), one is charmed and convinced by his half-voiced emphasis on the soft and the sweet. Surely Beethoven must have wanted it that way, as a beckoning contrast to what was to follow. Artur Schnabel thought so too in his three recordings of the piece.

Igor Markevitch, born in Kiev in 1912, spent his early years in Paris where he became associated with Serge Diaghilev and Nadia Boulanger. As a young man he made a name for himself as a composer, then in the postwar years he remade himself as a conductor. In the 1950s he was a considerable figure among the modernists; and the recordings issued here, made in Berlin in 1952, capture him in congenial repertoire at the peak of his career. They are in the cosmopolitan-modernist mode, with much striving after power and sublimity—an ambition somewhat undermined by the quality of the players at his disposal. The sound is excellent and the documentary value real, though the Ravel and Stravinsky are in no way competitive in a crowded field. By contrast, the Honegger, recorded as it were while the paint was still wet, has a compelling spontaneity to recommend it and pleasingly dissonant sonorities. Markevitch later made a commercial recording, once available on a Decca LP.

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This release is tagged Volume 7 in Audite’s ongoing series devoted to Karl Böhm. The concerto is a live account dating from 1950 and may well prove the more interesting item. Backhaus left two studio accounts of the work, both for London/Decca: a fine mono version with Clemens Krauss, a less commanding stereo remake with Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt. If my memory is accurate, the performance featured here is closer to that earlier effort and is in many ways admirable in its unaffected directness and freedom from the excessive breadth that some pianists have imposed on the first movement. There it is interesting to hear how, while echoing Schnabel’s tempo for that movement, Backhaus doesn’t quite match that pianist’s smooth legato phrasing in a few key passages, the solo introduction being a prime case in point. With Backhaus it sounds slightly choppy. Nevertheless this is generally a commanding account, its one major flaw being the unfamiliar and unduly long cadenza that Backhaus favored in the finale, one that may well be his own. In the first movement he plays the familiar one by Beethoven. Sonically the piano comes off better here than the orchestra. It is unusually close in perspective but free of distortion. Typical of tapes of the period, however, the timbre of the orchestra is shrill, with unpleasantly edgy string tone. As for the Symphony No. 4, one wonders if this 1952 studio recording was ever previously released—it is not cited in either of the two WERM supplements. (Perhaps a limited issue was produced and confined to Germany.) Sonically it marks a big improvement over the concerto: less harsh if still a bit edgy and remarkable in its wide dynamic range and freedom from the once-common tape-hiss. Musically, it is very close to Böhm’s 1972 stereo account for DG with the Vienna Philharmonic, the one marked difference between them being this earlier version’s having a few rhetorical emphases in the third movement that the later account avoids. Both include exposition repeats in outer movement and offer tempos that, if slightly broader than usual, remain eminently musical. In short, this is a significant historical release.

When measured against all the other Schumann releases I have reviewed in the past year, this one places dead last. In almost every track there is at least one sizable stretch of music that comes off as strange. Her telltale mannerism in the Fantasy’s first movement involves slowing down at all the phrase endings. Why not just play it straight or try rushing things for a change? II, a march Schumann indicates should be “energetic”, is deflated right from the start. There’s no meat in the thick chords and no snap in the dotted rhythms. More problems plague the last movement. Though the overall wash of sound remains pretty enough, there is little care given to any of the melodic lines. A deadness pervades the whole thing—most excruciatingly at the contrarymotion arpeggios that appear near the work’s close. Harada’s Kreisleriana is slightly better, but all the extroverted pieces are too harsh, aggressive, and note-heavy; all the introverted ones are too soft and wandering. Of course, I have nothing against pianists working to cultivate a bipolar sound to reflect Schumann’s conflicted moods and mental states. But if the music becomes unpleasant to hear in either direction, you have gone too far. Harada would be well served by going back to basics, letting the scores suggest interpretations rather than imposing her own on them. I am sure she would find that the more natural-sounding results, which demand less patience from audiences, would attract far more of them to her product.

Audite’s companion work is Schumann’s Piano Quartet performed by Germany’s Mandelring Quartet and Claire-Marie Le Guay. The performances of both works are outstanding, and the recordings heard in CD mode have exceptional body and brightness; the piano, perhaps because of the close miking, is heard with bell-like presence and clarity and a nice ping on top. It suits the music well.…

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