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Old wine, new bottle.
We last heard these performances, taken
down on acetates at the 1953 Strasbourg
Festival, in Music and Arts’ big 6 CD
Fischer box. The D minor was a Fischer
favourite and his humanity and understanding
illumine every performance of it that
we possess. His 1954 commercial recording
of it (Philharmonia/Krips) is on Testament
and it’s to that performance that those
unversed in his intimacy and poetry
should turn – not least because the
live performance here is very dimly
recorded. And yet for those prepared
to listen beyond the constricted sound,
and beyond Fischer’s occasional and
obvious digital fallibility, the lessons
to be learned are incalculable.
High amongst them are
Fischer’s sense of cantabile phrasing
and the impassioned vocalisation, almost
operatic power, he finds in K466. He
fuses the intimacies and declamatory
brilliance in a single emotionally cogent,
intellectually rigorous arch, and his
sensitively humorous playfulness has
its true place in the first movement
exchanges. The power of the first movement
meets the subtly hued distillations
of the Romance, full of – despite the
unfavourable recording quality – gloriously
persuasive lyricism, that renders incidental
Fischer’s slips. Similarly, though to
a lesser degree, he brings to K365 a
sense of high-spirited clarity and comradely
generosity. His partner is Harry Datyner,
a fine musician and an apt foil for
Fischer. True, not all the runs they
make are synchronous but there is a
commendable sense of unity and uniformity
about their performance that never precludes
imaginative individuality.
Unfettered, as it were,
by the piano Fischer the conductor gives
full vent to his powers of direction
in the G minor Symphony. This is a strong
and stern reading, quite big boned in
the first movement with little gliding
portamanti in the second that point
to the Adagio-like tempo that Fischer
favoured over the written Andante. Here
his shaping of the wind themes is immaculate
and truly sensitive, whilst the finale
is powerful and convulsive. The orchestra
is hardly a model of precision engineering
but it’s enthusiastic.
Given the provenance
of these discs – Tahra note that the
acetates needed "extensive restoration"
- this is for specialists, and for those
who haven’t already acquired that M
and A set (with more Mozart, some Brahms
and a lot of welcome Fischer Bach).
Jonathan Woolf
Edwin Fischer (piano and conductor)