CD Review: Bernstein's fascinating but idiosyncratic Stravinsky

“Bernstein’s Stravinsky performances include some of his most indelible recordings,” reads one of the hype blurbs on the back of Sony Classical’s new Bernstein Conducts Stravinsky box. However, the recordings contained therein at times seem to imply otherwise; occasionally they are “indelible” for less than flattering reasons, despite Bernstein’s (and Stravinsky’s) best intentions. Another blurb, this time from Bernstein himself, proclaimed the Russian composer “the last great father-figure of Western music”: An ambiguous remark in the face of the conductor’s own difficult relationships with father-figures, to say nothing of his perceived failure at becoming one himself (at least as a composer).

The six, fairly short, LP-length CDs in the box alone speak of Bernstein’s sincere but guarded appreciation of Stravinsky. As expected, the big three early ballets are all represented (The Rite of Spring appears twice). Missing, however, are any works from the final four decades of Stravinsky’s life, a period of restless and often surprising stylistic turns which produced some of the finest works to flow from his custom-built nib. From 1947 on his amanuensis Robert Craft would turn him on to a wide array of interests, including early music and Webern. Unsurprisingly, given Bernstein’s well-known (and wrong-headed) aversion to Schoenberg and his successors, none of the late kinetic late serial scores are heard here. (Although he did appear uncredited conducting a section from Stravinsky’s The Flood in the composer’s recording for Columbia.) The most recent score included in this set is the Symphony of Psalms, composed nine years prior to the composer’s emigration to America in 1939 and 41 years before his death in Manhattan in 1971. 

To say that Stravinsky was, for his part, sometimes no less guarded of Bernstein's efforts on his behalf is putting it mildly. Stravinsky’s first encounter with the then up-and-coming maestro, at a Hollywood Bowl performance of the suite from The Firebird, was not auspicious—both he and his wife left disappointed. A few years later, during a performance of Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety under the direction of the composer in Venice, Stravinsky bolted out of his seat and headed right out the doors of La Fenice after only a few minutes. 

Of the first disc which opens this set, comprising The Soldier’s Tale and the Octet, Stravinsky acidly confided to Craft that he was “praying those records are never published.” Made early in his career with members of the Boston Symphony, Bernstein’s readings are softer-edge than one would expect, forecasting his later approach to other Stravinsky works. Beautifully pastel-colored though they are, they also evince unease with their brittle textures and expressive dryness. Almost as if Bernstein had attempted to stuff Stravinsky into an ill-fitting costume sewn together from the respective wardrobes of Brahms and Debussy. The results are especially surprising (and Stravinsky’s irritation understandable) with The Soldier’s Tale, a work whose tart harmonies and proto-jazz rhythms would seem ideal for the young Bernstein.

The second and fifth discs both include Bernstein’s justifiably renowned recordings of The Rite of Spring, from 1958 and 1972 with the New York Philharmonic and London Symphony respectively. Even Stravinsky, for once, generally approved of the results, at least of the former. (He had been dead for a few months by the time of the recording sessions for the latter.) Unlike many of the conductors who had recorded Stravinsky’s most famous score prior to him, Bernstein was among the first generation of conductors for whom The Rite of Spring had been an established fixture of their musical history. From the strained, falsetto opening notes of the solo bassoon to the final bludgeoning tutti, Bernstein is all unflagging swagger; with orchestra and conductor streaking before the listener like blazing rockets. Of the two recordings, the edge of danger is sharper and more menacing in the earlier, its blade digging into the flesh deeper thanks to the unanimity of purpose of both orchestra and conductor. The later English recording sounds better (it was originally mastered for quadraphonic sound), downright lush at times but the orchestra sounding less committed to Bernstein’s feverish vision.

As fine as those recordings are, however, it is in the splashy and exuberant second of the big Ballets Russes scores where Bernstein seems most in his element. His reading of Petrushka (1947 version) is alight with that joyous flash which makes Bernstein at his best so compelling. Throughout he charismatically conveys a sense of wide-eyed wonder over the pratfalls, side-slips, and unexpected pathos in Stravinsky’s panoramic musical description of the eponymous doomed puppet, whose antics bubble up as if within a dream amidst the revelry of a pre-revolutionary Russia; itself a doomed dream which, only a few years after the ballet’s premiere, would collapse into nightmare. 

Less successful is the disc containing the Concerto for Piano and Wind Orchestra and the suite from Pulcinella. The latter is colorful enough, although Bernstein misses a lot of the mordant irony of the music, inadvertently making it a spiritual companion to the genial nostalgia of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances and Tommasini’s The Good-Natured Ladies. At first anyway, Stravinskian neoclassicism was not so much return and renewal of tradition as it was subversive commentary upon it; which furthermore made clear that not only was going “back to Bach” futile, but that those forms had already been exhausted by repeated use and their own accrued cultural baggage. 

Seymour Lipkin joins Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in the Concerto but the conductor’s tendency to foist a Papa Brahms beard upon Stravinsky resurges. Lipkin’s passagework, especially in the finale, sounds muddy; the direction from the podium reticent, as if prudish embarrassment kept the conductor from embracing the music’s Roaring ‘20s insouciance. Better but still not ideal is Bernstein’s recording of the Symphony of Psalms, although it is still heavier and more legato than the best recordings (starting with the composer’s own with a pick-up ensemble consisting mostly of an earlier iteration of Bernstein’s band, also available on Sony Classical).

Preceding the Symphony of Psalms on disc 6 is Bernstein’s Boston Symphony recording of Oedipus Rex. Simply put: It is unbeatable. While Stravinsky may have intended for action in this opera to unfurl impassively, the characters treated as singing statues, Bernstein was having none of that. Rather than a “tragedy” encased within ironic commas, the conductor casts them off. Bernstein’s interpretation is unapologetically, compellingly emotional, even sensual. No other conductor better delivers the majesty and latent terror in Creon’s aria or in the “Gloria” choruses which divide the work. When the snare of destiny finally snags Oedipus, Bernstein drives the closing, tarantella-like chorus straight into the depths of Hades; leaving one’s speakers practically reeking of sulphur. His cast is uniformly superb. René Kollo’s Oedipus is simultaneously heroic, moving, and weak-willed; deftly conveying the character’s vainglorious denialism, only to despair when he realizes too late that the game is up. His Jocasta, Tatyana Troyanos, is regal and alluring. No marble statue she, but a flesh and blood woman right out of Verdi. Tom Krause is rich-toned, playing up Creon as a well-meaning Grand Inquisitor determined to raze Thebes and the whole of Earth in search of the truth.

Listening to these recordings one gets the impression of hearing Bernstein grapple no-holds barred with Stravinsky, with the latter occasionally eluding the conductor’s grasp. If not the last word in Stravinskian interpretation, they are fascinating documents nonetheless (and in the case of Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, and Oedipus Rex essential). Stravinsky and Bernstein completists will have likely already acquired this set by the time I finish this review. Others would do well to acquaint themselves first with other recordings, especially those by the composer himself, before committing to Bernstein’s idiosyncratic but devoted Stravinsky.

The Most Beautiful Brahms Cycle?

Shortly before the global pandemic brought concert life to a halt, I experienced the unexpected pleasure of hearing Zubin Mehta conduct live. “Unexpected” because in my mind Mehta’s name had become synonymous with the well marketed schlock and awe that classical record labels in the 1990s desperately hawked. Tarnishing the well-deserved lustre his name had garnered in his earlier career were The Three Tenors circus, the awful Turandot in Beijing’s Forbidden City, and middling recordings with the Israel Philharmonic. But the octogenarian whom I watched step onto the rostrum of Disney Hall was no flim-flam man, but a genuine artist who drew from the Los Angeles Philharmonic a vitality which seems to regularly elude colleagues decades younger than he. 

Impressed, I spent some time sifting through his discography in order to find further confirmation of how wrong I had been about him. And wrong I was, but sometimes my former self was also right. In the event, what I discovered were two Mehtas: scrupulous sound artist on one hand, cunning hustler chasing the bag on the other, both inhabiting the same person. While these divergent sides of his musical personality were not quite apparent in his younger days, by the time he transplanted himself from the West to the East Coast, he was already a Two-Face on the make.

Excepting the wizardry of Leopold Stokowski, who as if by osmosis could transform any ensemble into the Philadelphia Orchestra, it wasn’t until Pierre Boulez took the reins of “Murder, Inc.” in 1971 that an ensemble of ornery individuals otherwise known as the New York Philharmonic could be made to play beautifully together. Mehta, his successor, took this achievement a step further and cultivated a richly blended, solidly centered, oaken tone which the orchestra has, gratefully, preserved ever since. 

Among the dwindling, but avid fanboys who care about this sort of thing, Mehta’s tenure is often regarded — especially after the energy of the Bernstein and Boulez years — as one of the duller periods in the New York Philharmonic’s history. (His programming, studded with new and contemporary works, many whose complexity are no longer welcome at David Geffen Hall, would seem to indicate otherwise.) Some blame Mehta for losing the orchestra’s decades-long contract with Columbia Records, but the fact is that irreversible economic and audience demographic changes had already led to similar situations with orchestras in Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. (There also was no “loss” of anything as the orchestra would soon rebound to Teldec.) So what of Mehta’s New York discography? Much of it is actually quite good, about as consistent as his work in Los Angeles; with albums of Wagner, Strauss, and a voluptuous rendering of Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder among the highlights. But, perhaps, their finest collaboration on records is the Brahms cycle which they recorded across the late 1970s and early 1980s for Columbia (reissued in 2019 on compact disc by Sony Classical). 

Mehta’s heady interpretations luxuriate unabashedly in the collective sonority of the New York Philharmonic, which by then had banished any memories of the “cast iron string tone” that Virgil Thomson had once infamously decried. When listening to these hefty (but never heavy), bronzen recordings, beguilingly tilted towards the mid-range and bass, one would never guess that the polished, Old World-ish orchestra under the mikes had once been a pretty scrappy band. 

Try the gorgeously colored and weighted chords which open the Third Symphony, launching the first theme like a rocket across the sky. It then segues smoothly into the second subject, whose phrasing Mehta imparts just a touch of (Johann) Strauss to. Listen to the waves of autumnal gold and brown that Mehta and his New Yorkers ride aloft in their traversal of the opening movement of Brahms’ Second. Theirs is a marvel of subtly shaded colors, seamless transitions, and carefully sculpted phrasing. Everything sounds so unforced, yet evinces the care which was lavished by everyone involved. Then there are the deep hues they impart to the shifting, almost magical harmonic modulations preceding the redevelopment in the opening of the Fourth Symphony; like a twinkling nocturnal cityscape peering through a veil of fog. Perhaps most impressive of all is their traversal of the First, a work which in the wrong hands can sound blustery and tub-thumping. This interpretation, on the other hand, is anything but; sounding elegant and heroic, bold with a touch of introspection. The finale’s closing theme is here a full-throated song of joy, progressing inexorably to a brilliant coda which sweeps the listener along, without ever feeling as if one were being pressed along by the performers. 

Credit also goes to Columbia for a deep and wide production that hones in on the individual felicities in Brahms’ orchestration, without ever sacrificing ensemble sound. Compared to their, frankly, ugly productions with the same orchestra during the Mitropoulos and Bernstein eras, it seemed that Columbia Records, too, had come a long way.

Around the same time in the next time zone to the west, Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra recorded a Brahms cycle which has its own admirers for their corporate beauteousness of tone. For me, at least, their sleekness treads too close to being slick; amounting to a heap of lovely components signifying nothing greater than themselves, with Maazel’s auto-pilot direction disappointingly forecasting the much later work of his successor in “The Forest City,” Franz Welser-Möst. With Mehta there is an unforced sense of purpose, architectural line, and dramatic cogency which are missing from their rivals. To my ears, this set has few rivals and no superiors; remarkable those this may sound, there probably hasn’t been a more beautifully rendered cycle of these works since.

Brahms once wrote to a friend that in his music he strived to be beautiful when possible, but that perfection was a must always. Mehta and the New York Philharmonic eloquently demonstrate that in his four symphonies the great bearded master accomplished both these goals handily. 

CD Review: Mengelberg and “His” Concertgebouw’s living “lingua franca,” courtesy of Pristine audio

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. 

(A previous Pristine compilation of Mengelberg’s Tchaikovsky for Columbia and Odéon can be found here.)

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.

"A Religious Rite": Otto Klemperer's Final Concerts in the United States

Two of the most tempestuous decades of history, personal and global, had passed by the time Otto Klemperer returned to conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1962. Militarism, World War II, and the resulting seismic political and cultural shifts had left the world vastly changed from the one that existed at the time of his previous visit in 1936, when he aspired to succeed Leopold Stokowski.

In 1939 Klemperer was diagnosed with a right-sided acoustic neuroma—a brain tumor the size of a small apple sitting upon the nerve that transmits hearing and balance. The operation to remove it was a success; recovery less so. He suffered a permanent facial droop on his right side, partial atrophy of his tongue, and a years long manic episode that exasperated his family and colleagues. Thomas Mann noted that he appeared “unbalanced,” “noisy,” and “rather terrible.” His behavior soon became too much to bear for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, whose board terminated his contract in 1941.

“In the following years things went very bad for us financially,” he recalled. “I conducted very, very little. No one invited me.”

His erratic conduct worsened to the degree that he was considered unemployable, at least in the United States. Disillusioned, he eagerly returned to Europe as soon as the war ended, settling on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain in Hungary. His increasingly vociferous anti-Americanism stoked the suspicions of the FBI; his ironic skepticism of “socialist realism” irked Russian authorities. 

Finally in 1951 he earned the international breakthrough he and his family had so dearly been seeking. At the second of that year’s Festival of Britain concerts in London, Walter Legge—EMI’s producer-generalissimo—heard Klemperer’s performance of the Mozart “Jupiter” from the wings of the Royal Albert Hall. The rest, as they say, is history.

Eleven years later, Klemperer made his final appearances stateside, now as a celebrated elder statesman of the baton. To Eugene Ormandy, whom he privately excoriated over his thwarted Philadelphia ambitions in 1936, he cordially wrote that he looked forward to his forthcoming engagement with his orchestra. They almost did not come to pass.

Trouble was afoot. After a consultation, his psychiatrist in his new home in Zurich recommended that Klemperer cancel the concerts—advice that was duly ignored. He was at the beginning of a depressive spell that influenced his decision-making. Most regrettable for posterity was the collapse of recording plans with the Philadelphia Orchestra for Columbia, which hinged on not upsetting EMI in England, to whom he was contracted. Despite his initial enthusiasm for the project, as well as the personal involvement of Ormandy in its negotiations, Klemperer refused to accommodate these conditions and revise his programs of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms; he even scrapped plans to perform and record his own Symphony No. 2. 

On the eve of his performances, Klemperer was suffering from an unusually bad case of stage fright. As soon as he arrived with his daughter Lotte in New York City, he sealed himself off in his rented room and refused all visitors, save for his son Werner and a select group of close friends. He experienced a precipitous drop in weight and persistent insomnia.

Nevertheless, Legge continued to believe that Klemperer’s circumstances were a “fortunate state of affairs [that] almost guaranteed him a triumph with the Philadelphia Orchestra.” This turned out to not quite be the case. As had occurred twenty-five years earlier, audiences thrilled to Klemperer, but American musical critics—still under the sway of Arturo Toscanini, who had only passed away five years before—remained dismissive.

“There has been in England recently the same excitement about Klemperer. . . as there used to be about Toscanini. . . This talk was contradicted by the performances I heard in Carnegie Hall. . . Klemperer’s disregard of Beethoven’s directions and character produced strange slow-motion performances,” opined B. H. Haggin, longtime keeper of the late Maestro’s flame, before adding with a palpable disapproving sneer that these “somnolent performances. . . excited the audience to cheers.”

Others were more circumspect, if still cool. “Tempi were a bit slower and a shade more deliberate than those to which audiences in this country are accustomed,” was the guarded appraisal of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “[His concerts] had the aura. . . of a religious rite,” said Eric Salzman of the New York Times. “The public was awe-struck, the critics mainly skeptical.”

Although his planned series of recordings for Columbia fell through, broadcasts of Klemperer’s final Philadelphia Orchestra engagements have survived, and in decent sound besides. Whatever reservations that critics of that time may have had are hard to discern now that the high tide of the Toscanini cult has ebbed. Far from being “somnolent,” Klemperer’s performances are muscular; drawing from Ormandy’s Philadelphians an uncharacteristically manly, craggy sound. 

“A conductor must know how to hold attention,” Klemperer would muse near the end of his life. In these broadcasts he succeeds in that task, well after he and all those he loved in life have passed on into the eternity of history.

(This essay will be included as liner notes in a future Japanese release of Klemperer’s Philadelphia concerts.)

He did it his way: Otto Klemperer rehearsing the Philadelphia Orchestra, 1962.

“A Master’s Hand”: George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in Lugano

Arguably, the most lasting musical achievement of the 1960s was the elevation of the record producer to auteur. The work of Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, George Martin, and Joe Meek among others are well known, but their use of the recording studio as an instrument in and of itself had already been thriving among the practitioners of a genre from which they drew much inspiration. By the time the Eisenhower era ended in the United States, listeners of classical music were familiar with the electronically enhanced strings of Bruno Walter’s late Columbia recordings, the shifting colors and reverb of Leopold Stokowski’s Capitol discs, and the first installment of the “theatre of the mind” that Decca promised in their epochal Ring cycle. In 1964 Glenn Gould famously and permanently forsook live performance, which he regarded as a relic of a bygone time, in favor of “acoustic orchestrations” which were realizable only via the “autocracy” of the recording studio.

It would be tempting to view the success of George Szell as merely another product of this era. Not entirely uncoincidentally, the zenith of his career happened to overlap with that of hi-fi sound recording and reproduction. The fastidious perfection he drew from the ensemble he led for the last 24 years of his life, however, was no feat of electronic sleight-of-hand. 

“The Cleveland Orchestra was a fine orchestra when I first heard it,” he recalled during his tenth anniversary as its music director. “When I took over, some of the best members had left and I made it my business to get them back. . . The orchestra today is an instrument of artistic expression ranking with the best in the world, and with certain special qualities I do not find in any other orchestra at the present moment.”

Crisp, transparent, and immaculately precise, the Szell touch proved to be rewardingly phonogenic for a growing audience of listeners, to say nothing for the record labels which profited from his art. While some conductors seemed to lose their footing before the presence of microphones, Szell came alive, understanding early on that the invention of the gramophone signified the greatest paradigm shift in musical performance and reception in history. As he would with any matter musical (and often beyond its purview), Szell was deeply involved in the recording process: From the control room right down to dictating choices for album covers. His players had become accustomed to (if not necessarily enamored with) the obsessive control of their “Papa Szell,” an appellation which not only denoted his attentiveness and even warmth for his musicians, but also the paternalistic unto quasi-omnipotent power he wielded over the Cleveland Orchestra. 

“If God wills it, I accept,” Danny Majeske responded to Szell’s offer to succeed Rafael Druian as the orchestra’s concertmaster. “God has nothing to do with it—I will it!,” the conductor shot back. 

As his eleventh season into his Cleveland tenure drew to a close, Szell prepared to show off his orchestra’s prowess to European audiences, eager to demonstrate to them the unanimity and polish which had left American critics grasping for superlatives. 

“What has developed [since Szell took over the orchestra] was a kind of empathy, an ability on the part of the players to identify so completely with the style and purpose of the music that it might almost appear as though they themselves had taken part in the composing of it,” remarked Herbert Elwell shortly before the Cleveland Orchestra’s embarked on their 1957 tour of Europe. “[They] have learned in a remarkable way to listen to one another as chamber music players do. . . The result is an enormous increase in refinement and flexibility.”

In a letter to Charlotte Flatow penned two years prior, Szell was more direct. 

“[The] Cleveland Orchestra, although a comparatively young one, is in every respect fully the equal of American orchestras heard up to now in Europe and, in some respects, even superior to them.”

Nonetheless, as the tour neared and then was underway, the conductor grew increasingly anxious. “The trip was hard on all of us but hardest on Szell,” Anshel Brusilow remembered. “In Berlin he went looking for places he remembered from his youth, when he had worked with Richard Strauss at the Berlin Opera. He found nothing he could recognize. Not just the buildings but the streets themselves were obliterated. Then he knew what World War II had done to Berlin.” His return to the continent which had nursed and developed his talents was a personally emotional experience. More importantly, however, he worried about how European audiences would judge his orchestra. With his typical sense of care and detail, he arranged for programs that highlighted the Cleveland Orchestra’s finest qualities, as well as accounting for variety. No two programs would be exactly alike. His worries would ultimately be unfounded: The European reception of the Clevelanders was rapturous. 

“Ovations without end,” reported the Spandauer Volksblatt of the orchestra’s Berlin stop. “It turned into a festival.” The New Statesman and Nation in London wrote: “It is one of the prime virtues of the Cleveland Orchestra. . . that their brilliance is entirely subordinated to musical considerations. They play with the loving spontaneity of a fine European orchestra, as well as with the discipline, blend, and unanimity characteristic of America.”

Switzerland was the tour’s pivot. From there the Cleveland Orchestra would venture to neutral Austria, then to Communist Czechoslovakia and Poland. His final Swiss concert in Lugano, preserved here on this set, is marked by a nervous tension unique in his discography. The evocative mists of Debussy’s La mer are dispelled in favor of a scrupulous clarity which properly contextualized this score as a cornerstone of musical modernity, its play of sounds sounding as if they still were freshly scored. Schumann’s Symphony No. 2—a Szell favorite—has an air of nervy energy that at moments (especially in the Scherzo) strikes the listener as an unlikely foretaste of Shostakovich. 

An anonymous critic for the Tribune de Lausanne who had attended the Lugano concert wrote that Szell “sometimes allow[ed] himself to be caught up in a frenzy of tempi which transcend the golden mean,” and had chided his selection of a work by Paul Creston (not included here). Despite that, he compared him favorably to Leopold Stokowski and Serge Koussevitzky. “What [the Lugano concert] revealed to us was that [the Cleveland Orchestra] is indisputably one of the premiere orchestras of our time,” he concluded. 

Another reviewer, this time for the Journal de Genève, added: “The technical and artistic qualities [of the orchestra] are simply extraordinary. Unnecessary to add that this judgment is partially in respect to the conductor. Extremely dynamic and colorful, animated by a fire and an irresistible pulsation, the interpretations are coordinated by a master’s hand. Szell has the gift to inflame his musicians, who are individually and collectively admirable.”

On these recordings, the careful listener will find a George Szell wholly unlike the cold and clinical stereotype that has remained stubbornly persistent among record collectors. Instead, these performances are marked by a possibly surprising sense of adventure and risk. Here is evidence, as if any more were needed, that this vertiginously daring musical high wire act, which eschewed empty virtuosic display, could thrive without the safety net of the studio; further testament of a remarkable collective partnership between orchestra and conductor whose legend seems to only burn brighter with every passing year.

(This essay will be included as liner notes in a forthcoming reissue of this concert by ATS in Japan.

George Szell going plane crazy with friends in Prague (1930s).

“He will live on in the hearts of all of us”: Bruno Walter’s final tribute to Arturo Toscanini

Late in life, Bruno Walter would muse upon the didactic value of sound recordings to Columbia Records’ Arnold Michaelis. Tellingly, he singled out the recorded legacy of one conductor as being particularly valuable to future generations: 

“I am really very happy about this idea that the disappearance of all the traces of our lives as performing musicians is not anymore to be feared. That we really. . . can live on in our best efforts. . . It is a kind of school. So it is for young conductors who can hear how Toscanini conducted this or that.”

The conducting profession has never been conducive to the forging of warm friendships among its most famous practitioners, especially during the golden age of the maestro-auteur in the early 20th century. Walter himself was aware that his mentor, Gustav Mahler, had been a fierce rival of Arturo Toscanini’s when happenstance brought both conductors to New York City during the same period. The disparity of their respective backgrounds and ages notwithstanding, a firm friendship based on mutual respect would be forged between these two conductors which would endure their entire lives. 

They first crossed paths in 1926 when Walter, then among the leading lights of the German musical world, was invited as a guest conductor to La Scala. Writing about the occasion in his memoirs, Theme and Variations, Walter recalled: “The meeting, casual though it was, made a deep and lasting impression upon me. I wished I would come to know the man better and fathom the secret of so exponential a being.”

Toscanini, though sometimes grumbling disapprovingly over his colleague’s interpretations, was nonetheless appreciative of Walter as both friend and musician

“When I see the good Bruno Walter,” he confided to his mistress, Ada Colleone Mainardi, “I really feel that I’m ten years younger than he!”

Within less than a decade of their first meeting, the lives of both conductors would be tossed asunder by the epochal winds of history about to blow through Europe. Toscanini, by the late 1930s permanently residing in America, emerged from retirement to assume the role as music director of NBC’s newly created flagship orchestra. Though prone to professional jealousies, he extended guest invitations to conductors fleeing the Old World in search of refuge and a chance to restart their careers in the New World. Among those whom he helped was Walter, who had fled the Anschluss and the imminent invasion of France, and was mourning the murder of his daughter Gretel besides. He made his first post-exile American appearance in March and April 1939 with the NBC Symphony in a five-concert series—a generous engagement reflective of Toscanini’s admiration. This was followed next season with another five-concert guest series which included, among other things, an electrifying reading of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony which, gratefully, has been preserved. 

Curiously, Walter would not be invited to conduct the NBC Symphony again until February 1951, when he replaced Toscanini, then recovering from a knee injury. 

After Toscanini’s final retirement in April 1954, NBC disbanded what had by then essentially become “his” orchestra. Instead of walking away, the ensemble independently reconstituted as the Symphony of the Air, promoting itself as “the orchestra that refused to die.” Don Gillis, composer and former producer for the NBC Symphony’s broadcasts, cabled the ensemble’s former music director an invitation to lead their first concert. He politely, but firmly rejected the orchestra’s “touching and kind [message],” stating that his advanced age and frail health precluded any possibility of considering any conducting engagements. 

If not presiding in person, Toscanini’s spirit at least hovered over the orchestra as strong as ever, even while the man himself rapidly wasted away. By the time his former orchestra was planning its elaborate concert commemorating his ninetieth birthday, Toscanini mental faculties had deteriorated to such a degree that one wonders whether he was even aware of the forthcoming occasion. Early in the morning of January 1, 1957, Toscanini would suffer a debilitating stroke—two weeks later he was dead. 

 “I am too deeply shocked by the passing of my dear and revered friend,” Walter wrote in a memorial tribute. “In him was greatness and I am sure the memories of his glorious activities. . . will live on in the hearts of all of us.”

Walter, himself an octogenarian and not in robust health, was moved to make out his last will and testament during this time. A few weeks later, his fragile physical state forced him to decline being a pallbearer for Toscanini at his funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. 

Already from the year before, when he was approaching his eightieth birthday, Walter was beginning to curtail his conducting engagements. In a letter to the New York Philharmonic’s manager, Bruno Zirato, he announced that he would not renew his regular guest appearances with the orchestra after the 1956 – 1957 season. 

“I feel the hour has struck for me to discontinue an activity which has meant so much to me,” he wrote. 

In his final years, he would cease performing live altogether, instead venturing from his Beverly Hills home only as far as a relatively short drive to Hollywood and Eagle Rock in order to conduct the pick-up Columbia Symphony Orchestra. These final recording sessions—covering repertoire ranging from Mozart to Mahler—have remained Walter’s best known, with the fire and verve of his early years mellowed (some would argue “dulled”) into agreeable geniality. 

But on February 3, 1957, as he (along with Pierre Monteux and Charles Munch) stepped before Toscanini’s old orchestra for the last time, much of that old fire returned in a triumphantly blazing performance of the Beethoven Eroica that is perhaps the finest of all Walter’s extant recordings of the symphony. 

Unsurprisingly given the occasion and ensemble, the performance has a Toscanini-like grip quite unlike Walter’s contemporary performances, be they in the studio or the concert hall. It also is a reminder of the orchestra’s reluctance to play according to Walter’s preferences. Violinist Felix Galimir remarked that members of the NBC Symphony would often “not even watch whatever [the guest conductor] was doing.” 

Replying to an admirer who had also commented on this unique aspect of this performance, Walter wrote: “I presume your impression may be explained by the fact that it was an orchestra which had played the same work under Toscanini for many years.”

The performance does not suffer in the least for all that, which is markedly superior to the stereo commercial recording he would make shortly afterwards. From the moment those twin E-flat chords pound forth, Walter’s interpretation surges with an irresistible sense of momentum tempered by subtle flexibility of line and sonority. It is tempting to wonder whether Walter’s traversal would have earned the admiration of Toscanini had he lived to hear it. Certainly it proves to not only be a fitting tribute to his recently deceased friend, but an inadvertently touching memento of the elemental power that Walter still managed to rouse from himself on occasion. 

Just over a month later, on March 7, 1957, he suffered a heart attack, the first of two that year, leaving a permanent mark on his career and performance style. The final curtain upon Bruno Walter’s career had begun to be drawn. 

Walter and Toscanini, unlikely friends, looking cozy in Leipzig during the latter’s 1930 European tour with the New York Philharmonic.