The name of Sir Adrian
Boult was not greatly in evidence in
EMI’s Great Recordings of the Century,
so it made some amends that he appeared
fairly early in Great Artists of the
Century (this disc has actually been
around for several months). I was certainly
not alone in thinking it strange that
this celebrated recording of the Schubert
"Great" C major took so long
to reappear; in the meantime his 1934
version of the work had already made
it to CD [review
but nla], as had a 1969 Prom performance
on BBC Legends [review].
This leaves the 1950s Nixa, to which
EMI also hold the rights, still to come
- not that I hold out much hope of that.
In his day, Boult was
seen as an objective, idealist interpreter,
and his performance of the Schubert
– and the classical repertoire in general
– was considered at the opposite pole
to the subjective, romantic manner of
Furtwängler. With the passage of
time, this view needs modification.
For one thing, the "authenticists"
have taught us a new form of objectivism
with their upfront tempi and their rejection
of the long legato line. For another,
the "authenticists" themselves
have muddied the waters since a conductor
such as Harnoncourt, while imposing
an "authentic" manner of playing
on the orchestra, is actually completely
subjective from another point of view,
often adopting as wide a range of tempi
as Furtwänger ever did.
Today, it seems to
me, Boult’s "Great" C major
appears as a profoundly romantic document.
Not because he changes tempo freely,
though in fact he does allow slight
modifications for second subjects. He
closes the first movement with an emphatic
rallentando and occasionally broadens
elsewhere to bring home structural points,
but not to the same extent as Furtwängler
or even Walter or Böhm.
But no, I mean profoundly
romantic in that he reveals the symphony
as a melancholy "Winterreise",
a tragic evocation of the Austrian countryside
by a composer who could still see life
but no longer felt himself a part of
it. Indeed the same perhaps applied
to Boult himself, a nostalgic recreation
of a Viennese world the tail-end of
which he had known. Boult’s Schubert,
no less than that of Furtwängler,
Walter and Böhm, is a retrospective
view by a generation which had known
Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler. Even the
idea of an overall structure – a program,
a sort of "darkness to light"
progression – is essentially romantic,
as is perhaps idealism itself.
As to how he
gets this particular result, though
his tempi are in the main swift – once
past the introduction which, like virtually
all his generation, he took in four
not in two – he grasped, and conveyed
to the listener, the fact that Schubert’s
invariable grouping of bars into units
of four actually means that there is
an overlying slow tempo behind
the fast tempi. The finale spins with
the best, but listen to how he inflects
the theme which begins with four equal
notes. With some conductors the four
notes are weighted equally, but with
Boult there is a little push on the
first so we hear, as it were, not four
short bars but one long one. It is this
sense of inexorable slow movement which
gives the performance its unique character,
Schubert the melancholy wanderer even
while life is dancing vitally around
him.
My only reservation
about this certainly great performance,
is that I seem to have heard it sounding
just that little bit more incandescent
in a relay from the Proms. If the performance
I heard was that from 1969 now on BBC
Legends, then I must have imagined it,
since that performance does not particularly
alter the situation. But I think the
one I heard would have been in the 1970s.
Even among Boult’s
own generation, there were alternative,
non-romantic views. In 1958 in Turin,
Vittorio Gui gave a performance of which
even Sir Roger Norrington should approve.
The introduction is definitely "in
two" with a non-legato delivery
of the horn theme, the distinctly up-front
first movement closes with as little
rallentando as is possible without being
actually dogmatic. The Andante con moto
goes at a chirpy Haydnesque pace (12:07
compared with Boult’s 14:03), the Scherzo
is exhilarating if a little breathless
and the Finale is a zip. Shades of Toscanini?
I think not, for Gui was his own man
and many of his interpretations were
quite different from Toscanini’s; rather,
he arrived at Schubert by starting from
Haydn, Mozart and Rossini, just as the
authenticists have, rather than working
backwards from Mahler.
The trouble is, Gui
wasn’t asked to record the work. I suppose
people didn’t realise he was anticipating
21st Century performances
and just
thought he’d got it wrong. If ever a
conductor got the best of both worlds,
by the way, it was Karel Ančerl,
and he wasn’t invited
to record the work with his own Czech
Philharmonic for his recording
company – Supraphon called in Konwitschny
from Leipzig
and it is thanks to East Berlin radio
that Ančerl was able to set down
a truly incandescent reading.
But back to Boult,
for his interpretation stands beside
those of Furtwängler, Walter and
Böhm as an essential document of
the romantic view of this symphony and,
if a few years earlier Boult might have
energised the reading just that little
bit more, this late version has a mixture
of serenity and melancholy, together
with a marvellous sense of inevitability,
which is moving in itself.
The Brahms couplings
are not exactly an original choice,
for they have hardly been out of the
catalogue since they first appeared.
Counting the original LP, I now have
this lively and well-proportioned version
of the Overture four times, and at least
the other discs come with more Brahms!
Since he had previously recorded the
piece for Nixa and World Record Club
(in 1960s stereo) might we not have
had one of these for a change? The Baker
Brahms Rhapsody is a classic of the
gramophone – though there are those
who feel (I don’t) that the flowing
tempo robs the music of its stark tragedy
– but surely most serious collectors
will have it already. Still, if you
haven’t then this is another
reason to snap this disc up.
Christopher Howell
Dame Janet Baker (mezzo)*, John Alldis Choir*
