The reputation of Jascha
Horenstein has never been higher. In
fact I believe his reputation has never
been so high since his death in 1973.
Why else would there be so many reissues
of past commercial recordings and first
time issues of radio archive recordings
as there have been these past few years?
Recording companies do not have money
to burn so they would hardly issue so
much material if they did not know there
was a substantial number of collectors
prepared to buy it.
Though by no means
the only label reissuing Horenstein
recordings, BBC Legends was always going
to lead the way with his work since
he was so highly regarded in Britain
for so many years and was broadcast
so often by the BBC. Interesting when
you remember that Horenstein was not
British, so giving the lie yet again
to the oft-repeated urban myth that
the British only like to back their
own artists.
Horenstein was born
in the Ukraine and grew up in Vienna
and Germany and post-war he held American
citizenship. Neither was he ever resident
in Britain, as was wrongly alleged in
a recent review. He was, for most of
the last years of his life, actually
resident in Switzerland. So why did
the British like him so much? Obviously
there was a simple and straightforward
appreciation of a superb musician, but
I have always suspected there was also
an innate sympathy for a character who
clearly didn’t seem to fit anywhere.
Horenstein wore his peripatetic artistic
existence with some unease. To quote
what is an Irish expression, said of
Horenstein by the former leader of the
London Symphony Orchestra Hugh Maguire,
you always had the feeling that Horenstein
"had his feet in the wrong wellies".
Well we British like people like that
and are prepared to give them a chance
when others might not. Not, of course,
that this aspect would ever have saved
Horenstein for longer than a couple
of concerts had he been a second-rater.
There is no more critical and discerning
an audience in the world for classical
music than the British and they would
have sussed out a "wrong-’un"
had Jascha Horenstein been one very
quickly indeed. Horenstein was no second-rater.
He was straight out of the top drawer,
an inheritor of the great tradition.
That is not to say that he got it right
every time. He didn’t. No great artist
ever does that. Be very suspicious of
the Maestro Perfects of this
world. They are often all style and
no substance. Like all the greats, Horenstein
had to dare to fail to succeed and he
sometimes did simply fail. But the failures
were more than outweighed by the successes
which his growing recorded legacy testifies
to. Not ever easy music-making, mark
you. Horenstein was never an easy conductor
to get to know. His was music making
that was always challenging of the audience
and the reaper of rewards only for those
with more than half an ear to hear
rather than just listen.
His appearances in
Britain date from the mid 1950s and
continued unbroken until the year of
his death in 1973. He appeared all over
the country, not just in London, and
in the end was offered the job of succeeding
Sir John Barbirolli at the Hallé
Orchestra in 1970. A position he turned
down because of failing health. But
he was also highly regarded in France
as the issue recently of recorded material
from concerts in Paris spanning ten
years has shown (Music and Arts CD-1146
covering 9 CDs). He also conducted regularly
in the USA. In an interview in Gramophone
magazine around 1970 Horenstein talked
about his reputation in Britain being
largely built on his conducting of Mahler
and Bruckner. I think he regretted this
as he conducted a very wide repertoire
indeed. His last British engagement
was actually Wagner’s Parsifal at Covent
Garden. But it’s true he was known as
a Mahler and Bruckner man for so many
of my generation, each concert or broadcast
by him in those two composers an event
not to be missed.
When the post-war revival
in the interest in Mahler’s music got
underway only Holland could possibly
claim prominence over Britain in being
a more fertile ground for its appreciation
and even that is proved a close-run
thing by the public record. Conductors
such as Horenstein, Goldschmidt, Barbirolli,
Schwarz, Klemperer, Del Mar, Van Beinum,
Steinberg (these last two fine Mahlerians
followed each other as Principal Conductors
of the London Philharmonic), Süsskind,
Hurst, Boult and Groves (who in Liverpool
in the mid-1960s gave the first complete
one conductor/orchestra Mahler cycle
since the 1920s) had led the way in
laying down the foundations for the
great Mahler renaissance in the 1960s.
Their work and the work of critics such
as Deryck Cooke, Donald Mitchell, Neville
Cardus, William Mann and Michael Kennedy
made Britain, all of Britain, a home
for Mahler before many other countries
could catch up in even their capital
cities. People in Manchester, Liverpool,
Bradford, Birmingham, as well as London,
knew their Mahler and knew him well.
Here’s an example. As early as 1960
the distinguished critic Ernest Bradbury
was able to write: "In recent years,
Leeds audiences have done well in the
cause of Mahler and Bruckner and it
is highly likely that the majority of
listeners tonight are by now well acquainted
with the general structure and particular
Lokalton of a Mahler symphony."
It is worth stressing that this is a
city in the provinces of the north of
England Bradbury was writing about,
not London, and in 1960 at that. The
reason for Bradbury’s confidence in
the Mahlerian appreciation of a Yorkshire
audience as early as 1960 was performances
there by, among others, Jascha Horenstein.
In fact so confident were the concert
planners of Leeds in the Mahlerian senses
of their audience as early as 1959 that
Eduard Van Beinum and the Amsterdam
Concertgebouw had been scheduled to
give Mahler’s Seventh in the Town Hall
that year, though Van Beinum’s death
intervened three weeks before the concert
took place. (They got Bruckner‘s Eighth
under Jochum instead and finally heard
the Mahler Seventh under Barbirolli
in 1960. [the first
live concert I attended - LM])
And there in the middle of the great
Mahler movement in Britain from the
late 1950s was Jascha Horenstein. He
had helped Leeds people’s appreciation
of Mahler with the London Symphony Orchestra
in the Fifth Symphony there as early
as 1958. (He recorded it for the BBC
in 1960.) He gave the Eighth in London
in 1959 in a landmark performance also
available on BBC Legends (BBCL 4001-7).
The Fifth again at the Edinburgh Festival
in 1960 with the Berlin Philharmonic.
The First, Fourth and the Fifth were
given in London in 1960 for the centenary
series of every work except the Eighth
which had been played the previous year
under Horenstein. The Third came in
London in 1961 and he would later conduct
the Ninth twice in the capital in 1966
(Music and Arts CD 235 and BBC Legends
BBCL 4075-2). The Sixth would be heard
under him in Bournemouth in 1969 (the
subject of the present review) and back
in London the Seventh later that year
(BBC Legends BBCL4051-2 and Descant
02). There were other Mahler performances
in Britain by Horenstein, of course,
but it is the case that in just over
a decade he had conducted every Mahler
symphony in Britain except the Second.
(He had already given that with the
LSO in South Africa back in 1956.) Finally
"Das Lied Von Der Erde" would
be heard in Manchester in 1972 (BBC
Legends BBCL 4042-2) so completing the
Horenstein British Mahlerfest which
we can now enjoy on CD largely thanks
to BBC Legends. As a matter of interest,
in that same period Horenstein also
conducted all the Bruckner symphonies
in Britain except for the Seventh. So
you can see why his Mahler and Bruckner
reputation was so high in Britain.
Horenstein also recorded
the First and Third Symphonies of Mahler
in the studio for Unicorn in 1969 and
1970 (UKCD2012 and UKCD2006/7). After
his death the company also found a stereo
recording of the Sixth Symphony at Swedish
Radio with the Stockholm Philharmonic
from 1966 (UKCD 2024/5, a concert on
the same night that Bernstein conducted
the Eighth in London with the Horenstein-trained
LSO) and it later appeared on the Music
and Arts label too (CDC 785). This Stockholm
performance had much to recommend it
but there was always, for me, the feeling
of "stopgap" about it. It
revealed enough to show that Horenstein
saw the work as a strictly organized,
classically rigorous drama that stressed
its twentieth century foundations with
a bleak, dogged, unforgiving outlook.
The problem was the orchestra‘s playing.
Whilst I think it is the case that the
Stockholm Philharmonic gave their best
for Horenstein, their best was just
not good enough for his interpretation’s
particular tenor. There is a corporate
lack of concentration over the whole
performance that renders Horenstein’s
uncompromising vision of the work into
mild anaemia and so causes what is a
noble failure. To give what Horenstein
clearly demands, as is borne out by
the Bournemouth performance under review
now, an unbending concentration across
the whole immense work is needed and
the Swedish orchestra is just not quite
up to that. There were later plans for
Horenstein to record the work in the
studio in London with the LSO in 1973
but his death put paid to that. There
it might have ended were it not for
the fact that the BBC possessed this
tape of him conducting the Bournemouth
Symphony Orchestra in the work from
1969. When they re-broadcast it in the
late 1980s in Radio 3’s "Mining
The Archives" series Mahlerites
who admired Horenstein knew that here
was the real deal at last. The fact
that it has taken some years between
that broadcast and this release brings
a case of "better late than never"
and a feeling of gratitude that BBC
Legends has now plugged the penultimate
gap in the Horenstein Mahler discography
at last. There is one final piece in
the Horenstein British Mahler story
to go and that is the Fifth, a work
he conducted at least three times in
Britain in concert. In the archive at
the Barbican Centre in London there
is an "off-air" copy of that
studio recording that he made with the
LSO at BBC Maida Vale Studios in 1960
(Shelfmark A00337, MP Ref: BCT 0344).
Those who have heard it testify to its
musical quality and the acceptability
of the sound so can we hope that BBC
Legends will look into the possibility
of obtaining this for release next?
Horenstein gave a great interpretation
of the Fifth and it deserves to be heard.
The Bournemouth Symphony
Orchestra of 1969 was a fine and versatile
band, well-trained by their Principal
Conductor Constantin Silvestri. So when
Horenstein stepped on to the podium
of the, now demolished, Winter Gardens
in Bournemouth (an indoor concert hall
in case anyone not familiar with British
musical life is wondering) he had before
him an ensemble who were more than capable
of delivering exactly what he meant
in this work and the difference over
the Stockholm version is stunning. This
now supersedes that earlier recording
in every respect but one. You need to
know that this new release is a mono
recording where the Stockholm was in
stereo. The BBC had not stretched to
stereo recording in the English regions
by early 1969 but this is excellent,
well-balanced, firm and undistorted
mono sound that will only displease
the seriously audiophile listener and
bothers me not one jot. What you will
hear is all the details of this score
in excellent, conductor’s balance perspective,
the screaming upper line thrillingly
revealed, the depths of low brass sound
malevolently present and every point
in between in sharp relief.
Horenstein was the
ultimate nihilist conductor. No one
could project bleak despair across the
drama of a work like he could, as can
be judged by his recorded performances
of Mahler’s Ninth. So it is with the
Sixth. What is so remarkable about this
performance is Horenstein’s absolute
determination to allow nothing in that
detracts from the unswerving belief
that this is a work about hope snuffed
out. When you get to the very end, where
the final statement of the cruel march
rhythm first heard near the beginning
and repeated throughout the work sends
the hero to oblivion, you are aware
this is what Horenstein was aiming at
from the start, because he believes
this is what Mahler was aiming for at
the start too. In this way this is the
most focused and distilled performances
of this work I have ever heard and I
doubt many conductors have the intellectual
rigour matching great musicianship to
both take this on board and deliver
it so convincingly. Horenstein always
had the ability to take in a work in
its entirety and this is no better evinced
as here. A brave thing to do, of course.
Remember what I said about daring to
fail to succeed. Take those passages
where the mood seems to lift and there
is light, lyricism and air to contrast
all too briefly with the struggle, tragedy
and mechanistic driving energy of this
Kruppsinfonie. I am thinking
of the "Alma Theme" second
subject of the first movement, the pastoral
cowbells and shimmering strings passages
in the same movement recalled in the
last, the brief celesta-accompanied
tone painting towards the end of the
first movement, the peculiar Trios of
the Scherzo and the whole of the Andante.
The overwhelming impression from the
way he treats these passages is that
Horenstein doesn’t want them to have
too much of an effect on us. He holds
them at arms length by seeming to push
them along at all costs. It isn’t a
case of his rushing these passages.
There is a pressing-on, but not enough
for you to be unaware of them. It is
more that you are not going to be allowed
to make any kind of emotional attachment
to them. This way Horenstein seems to
dangle them in front of us, to tell
us we will never achieve the repose
or comfort they promise, that our doom
is already decreed by fate and so we
may as well submit to it. It’s a remarkable
aspect, moving and unnerving in its
extraordinary honesty, and one he never
forgets to mark when ever the need arises.
This makes this performance so dark
that you may only want to experience
it on a few occasions.
More than any other
Mahler symphony the Sixth is built rigorously
around repeated use of particular rhythmic
figures, thematic groups and chord clusters
held together in a tight four movement
symphonic form. The first movement is
a strict sonata form but the last movement
also has the most careful and easily
discernable structural pillars. This
is all gift to Horenstein’s familiar
ability to forward-plan with modular
tempo that make sure the architectonic
plates that are the structure of the
work never seem to shift. If ever his
gift for picking a more or less single
tempo for a whole movement was going
to work it would be in this symphony.
So it is that the first movement manages
a thunderous, heavy and dogged march
that still keeps grinding away in our
mind as Alma’s second subject group
sweeps in and out at around the same
basic tempo, keeping that sense of creative
detachment already mentioned. Likewise
the coda to the first movement. There
can be performances where the end of
the movement seems to yell out a sense
of triumph, albeit premature. Indeed
this is often an aspect that is used
to justify the placing of the Andante
after the first movement rather than,
as here, the Scherzo. Horenstein, by
not playing for any triumph at all at
this point, justifies triumphantly the
edition of the work he is using: the
1963 Critical Edition by Erwin Ratz
that bravely restored the inner movement
order to Mahler’s original conception
- Scherzo followed by Andante. After
the kind of desperation coda Horenstein
delivers, the assault of the Scherzo
after the first movement sounds dramatically
effective. The Scherzo itself is remarkable
for some whip crack string playing that
slices and slashes across the texture
adding to a poisonous brew that not
even the balm of the Andante will get
rid of. The Andante itself is, as I
suggested earlier, cool and clinical.
It is also all of one minute faster
than the Stockholm performance so Horenstein‘s
aim seemed to be towards ever more classical
framing. Rest for us the music certainly
is, but it is an uneasy rest which is
absolutely appropriate with what is
to come. That is not to say that the
simple presentation of the climax does
not have the power to move. It moves
because somehow Horenstein invests it
again with the feeling that it is a
transitory vision.
Earlier in this review
I mentioned Horenstein daring to fail
to succeed and the last movement illustrates
this well. At over 33 minutes this is
one of the longest versions you will
hear. Horenstein and his players pull
it off, but only just. The upside is
that you can hear instrumental details
and textures as though the score were
laid out before you like a musical equivalent
of a blueprint. The downside is that
there are some passages where I would
forgive anyone for thinking that the
tension drops. The long passage between
the two hammer blows, for example, could
do with a bit more kick. But, as I also
said before, Horenstein never made it
easy for himself, or us, so a bit of
perseverance is called for. The reward
is a truly cathartic experience which
is what this symphony should be in the
end. The hammer blows are superbly placed,
the chase to hoped-for triumph truly
desperate, the crush of fate that much
more terrible for being so grandly and
spaciously stated, the great coda a
fearsome dead zone all masked faces
at a funeral as the mourners gaze into
the grave.
The generous coupling
in this set is Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony,
a work Horenstein had the highest regard
for, as can be heard in his short but
revealing interview with Deryck Cooke
included in this set. It comes from
a BBC studio recording in 1971 and is
in stereo. It has been released before
on the short-lived BBC Radio Classics
label but, for this new release, Tony
Faulkner has performed a new remastering
and comparison shows this to be a marked
improvement. The sound is closer and
much more immediate. Horenstein recorded
the symphony for Unicorn in 1969 and
that version was remarkable for the
astounding side drum cadenza of Alfred
Dukes in the first movement - a berserk
assault with rim-shots cracking off
the sticks like bullets. Mr. Dukes was
not on duty for this BBC recording and
David Johnson, though a fine player,
doesn’t have the manic energy of his
colleague and delivers a more conventional
account of the great drum solo. Under
Horenstein the first movement moves
in two great arcs from the pregnant
opening, through a dogged military march
with side drum in perfect step, a life
affirming lyrical middle section that
scales to a wonderful horn-led climax
and then across the battle between side
drum and orchestra leaving a genuine
desolation at the close where John McCaw’s
eloquent clarinet solo stays in the
memory for a long time. The second movement
has all the energy you could want when
needed, but Horenstein’s acute sense
of the movement’s geography and his
tempo choice allow him to take care
to stress the reflective passages that
are sometimes short-changed by others.
The end brings real release and optimism
and a shout of joy.
The coupling of these
two symphonies is fascinating. They
are separated by just 16 years but also
by the Great War. Both have a first
movement dominated by a militaristic
march rhythm with side drum that both
marches and growls. Both use the march
as a weapon against us. But in the Mahler
the conflict is won by the march and
its allies who destroy the symphony‘s
soul, whereas in the Nielsen the march
and what it represent is finally beaten
down by the forces of light. Nielsen
ends his symphony with an emphatic yes.
Mahler ends his with an emphatic no.
All that needs to be
said about the final item on this set
is that Horenstein more than has the
measure of the mordant wit in Rossini’s
Semiramide Overture and the 1957 mono
recorded sound is spacious but clear.
This item came from the British Library
Sound Archive. I wonder what else of
Horenstein’s they have.
This is a major release
from BBC Legends containing a Horenstein
Mahler Sixth to grace the discography
of this work at last. You will be involved,
you will be moved, you will be unnerved,
you will not be disappointed.
Tony Duggan
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Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, New Philharmonia
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