Leafing through the RCA Monteux edition – all sixteen
hours of it – and the more than merely useful Philips Early Years box
is to be reminded of a number of things. One is the relative neglect
that he more than intermittently suffered and the other is the lacunae
in his discography, some, but by no means all, of which have been filled
by live material. Tahra’s four CD box adds more bounty because no less
than four of these major works are strangers to the commercial record
and make a first appearance – Brahms’ Symphonies One and Three and the
Tragic Overture as well as Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. Monteux was a
master of orchestral balance and he was an exceptional exponent of rhythmic
nuance; he moulded string lines as few others and his control of tempo
relationships was absolute. As an ex-violist (in the Geloso Quartet),
Folie Bergère string player and ballet conductor Monteux knew
all about inner balance, part-writing, and the incremental gradations
of inflections necessary to apply. All of these readings bear testimony
to his greatness and even the slight disappointments, including, I suppose,
rather oddly, the Stravinsky, still yield other compensatory riches.
Monteux conducted 184 concerts with the Concertgebouw
between 1924 and 1939 and gave seven world premieres during that time
(including Pijper’s Third Symphony). It may seem exhausting to trawl
through the works given an Amsterdam premiere by Monteux but I’ve narrowed
the selection to the decade 1924-34; The Rite of Spring, Tallis Fantasia,
Krenek’s Violin Concerto, Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, Pacific
231, Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No 1, Boulanger’s Psalm 129, Hanson’s
Lux Aeterna, Janacek’s Sinfonietta, Schulhoff’s Double Concerto for
Flute and Piano, Milhaud’s Chants Populaires Hébraïques,
Toch’s Piano Concerto, Malipiero’s Concerto for Orchestra, Caplet’s
Les Prières, Szymanowski’s Sinfonia Concertante. And all this
from a guest conductor who had only conducted that 1924 date because
Mengelberg was ill. Post War he continued his august association with
the orchestra taking 76 concerts over the period 1948-63 and all the
performances in this box date from this period and are derived from
the Archives of Dutch broadcasting companies. The Concertos by Brahms
and Sibelius and the Symphonie Fantastique were all taken down on 78s.
With performances as strong and involving as the ones
documented here it’s invidious to know where to start so let’s start
with the Berlioz, a magnificent traversal, lithe, powerful, magnetic
albeit preserved in a less than optimum recording – the sound in this
1948 recording, the earliest of all the preserved broadcasts, is distinctly
veiled, but never objectionably poor. Monteux was one of the most experienced
of Berlioz conductors and the orchestra equally well versed in the music.
The waltz brings a sense of drive and animation; the Marche au Supplice
is full of the most adroitly negotiated rubato, the intensity, compactness
and architectural balance of the work held in admirable proportion.
The two concertos make intriguing boxmates. Milstein plays the Brahms
in an October 1950 traversal whilst Jan Damen’s Sibelius was heard less
than two months later. Monteux had met Brahms as a member of the Geloso
Quartet when the composer was famously complimentary about French Quartet
playing of his music. Not long ago I reviewed his recording of the First
Piano Concerto with Julius Katchen, seminal Brahms conducting. Readers
may well be familiar with one of Milstein’s commercial recordings –
the 1954 Pittsburgh/Steinberg, the 1960 Philharmonia/Fistoulari or the
Vienna Philarmonic/Jochum, which dated from 1974 when the violinist
was seventy. This Concertgebouw performance has been available at least
once before – on Recital Records LP RR212. The Violin Concerto is a
splendidly masculine performance, with strong attacks and elegantly
phrased, frequently powerful and replete with some rhythmic give and
take in the opening paragraphs and some occasionally smeary and smudgy
Milstein in the cadenza, Milstein’s own. But how wonderfully and watchfully
Monteux’s corrals his orchestral forces and maintains and sustains a
flexible control over the score, precisely as he does with Katchen in
the Piano Concerto. Damen’s Sibelius reminds us of his considerable
musicianship though this does duplicate his meagre commercial discography
(he recorded the Sibelius with the LPO under van Beinum, his only other
extended outings on disc being the Mozart Turkish Concerto with
Böhm in 1938 and as leader in Scheherazade once more for van Beinum).
There is a lot of portamento in the first bars of the first movement
and a fair degree of tempo variation. There is also some indecision
over slowing tempi but otherwise, one or two technical chinks apart
– most obviously at the beginning of the finale - Damen proves himself
a laudable exponent, if one who tends very much to the cool side of
Sibelius playing; his playing is not precisely the antithesis of Ginette
Neveu’s fiery, almost contemporaneous recording but it occupies the
kind of place, tonally and expressively, that, for example, Efrem Zimbalist
does in relation to Heifetz or to Toscha Seidel; a nobility and lofty
intelligence that sometimes lacks propulsion and verve.
The Symphonies are amongst the highlights of the set;
without question absolutely essential purchases for Monteux admirers
- the Third in particular. The depth of the bass sonorities at a steady
tempo, the almost – it may be a cliché but it must be said –
balletic elegance he imparts to the Scherzo, the delineation of string
parts and entries, the sovereign command over detail and broad architectural
span are all wonderful. The First Symphony is not over brisk; the continual
sense of endemic architectural and expressive strain is a constant presence;
clarity of articulation is equally a virtue here and the lyrical effusiveness
of the slow movement is bathed in knowing affection, at a lyrically
affecting tempo that never congeals. I suppose it’s possible to time
those third movement pizzicatos better but I doubt it; the wind choir
is in superb form here and the weight and appropriate weight
of string tone an ever-present marvel even if some rallentandos won’t
be to all tastes. The drive and integration of the final rounds off
a must-have interpretation. Maybe Petrushka is slightly disappointing
after the heady delight of Brahms but it was Monteux, after all, who
had conducted the 1911 premiere (and plays that score declining the
revised 1947 version). Technically this is an eloquent performance,
a few minor details apart, and at a relaxed but never indolent tempo
Monteux gives plenty of free rein to the colourful and rich orchestration
and if ultimately I feel that it never quite grips, others may well
disagree. There are other riches elsewhere in a strong Tragic Overture
and a delightful talk between conductor, wife and John Amis (not Amos
as per the booklet and was he really recording the London interview
for the CBC not BBC?). If you want to know what Monteux thought about
Toscanini buy the box. In fact buy it anyway – there are superb portrait
photographs of Le Maître on the cardboard sleeves, two big booklets,
one reprinting, in French, a chapter from Doris Monteux’s It’s all
in the music and the other reprinting chapter IV of the same book
and appending notes on performances and premieres with English translations.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by John Quinn