It has been a bit of a sentimental journey listening to Pristine Audio’s latest release. Thanks to a $20 gift certificate to The Wherehouse a friend gave me on my 18th birthday, these recordings, albeit in a now long out-of-print compilation from the defunct Pearl label, were my gateway to Willem Mengelberg and historical recordings about 20 years ago. What dazzled me then continues to now: The crisp, tart sound of the Concertgebouw Orchestra; and the marshalling of its musicians into feats of seemingly spontaneous virtuosity by their music director with the shock of red hair that matched his temper.
Of course, these recordings hardly need another recommendation. The just over 100 sides that Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra cut with English Columbia represent some of the finest things ever preserved on records. Their glittering reading of the once popular Anacréon overture by Cherubini is a capsule demonstration of the best qualities of this artistic partnership: Vibrant tone color that is skillfully blended and offset as needed, flexibility of phrasing held together by steely ensemble unanimity; all of it embodying a belief in musical performance not as ossified ritual, but as a living act of the moment. Then there is their flashy strut through Beethoven’s “Turkish March” from The Ruins of Athens, which with its sly charm and play of color gives Sir Thomas Beecham a run for his money. Best of all, arguably, is the June 1929 recording of Liszt’s Les préludes, a swashbuckling symphonic drama in miniature approached by very few other conductors and surpassed by none.
Only the fallible (and cut) recordings of Mendelssohn and Berlioz stumble, but even giants must trip every now and again.
Some of this repertoire was re-recorded for Telefunken (or captured in live broadcasts) a few years later, but by then interpretive bloat and a perceptible drop in the orchestra’s near-superhuman standards crept in. It is in these recordings made between 1926 – 1931 where Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw can be heard at their staggering prewar peak; a partnership which combined interpretive verve, orchestral color, precision, and flexibility of response that was equaled perhaps only by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The second volume of that aforementioned Pearl set had been fetching handsome sums on the second-hand market for years, which alone makes this new and inexpensive recompilation from Pristine something to celebrate. Better still, these discs now sound better than ever thanks to fresh transfers by Mark Obert-Thorn (who also transferred that earlier set, as well as selections of this material for Naxos Historical). Much has changed since the 1990s and that era’s preferences for taming as much as possible the inevitable “bacon fry” that 78 RPM records make as the needle drags through their shellac grooves. The unavoidable trade-offs, however, were often fuzzy sounding instrumental attacks, tubby bass, and a glassy treble. Some collectors continue to have their sleep disturbed by the horrific, chalky, over-CEDARed nightmares produced by the likes of Grammofono 2000 and Iron Needle (“Rusty Needle” would have been more fitting). These present transfers are discreetly noisier than their predecessors, but gain over them considerably in depth and presence.
Compare the opening attack of Mengelberg’s dramatic recording of Beethoven’s Coriolan with previous iterations. The articulative bite of the Dutch strings finally comes through with an arresting immediacy and sharpness, underlining the surface gloss with a sense of danger. Tuttis cut through, rather than thump; textures sound taut. Or listen to their joyous romp through Weber’s Euryanthe overture, a deceptively tricky score with overlapping and contrasting layers that shift with dizzying speed. For once, listeners hear the immaculately etched lines that Mengelberg (and Weber) surely intended, rather than runny pastels.
“I study the score daily and continue to discover new things,” Mengelberg once admonished his orchestra who was languishing under one of his infamously intensive rehearsals of a work they knew well. Garrulous though he may have been in life, these stunning series of recordings are a poignant testament to a time when the language of Bach, Beethoven, Weber, Mendelssohn, were a living lingua franca, not dusty relics codifying rituals in a dead language.
Latest release from Pristine Audio: The first of a two-part compilation of maestro-auteur Willem Mengelberg and “his” Concertgebouw Orchestra’s recordings for Columbia.