Arts
Archives have put us all in their debt with their valuable series
dedicated to the under-recorded Peter Maag. This is now their
second issue of performances conducted by André Cluytens. However,
while the major companies only sporadically remembered the existence
of Maag after his early Decca period, Cluytens recorded regularly
and quite extensively for EMI throughout his career, mostly
in London, Berlin and Paris. He was not an especially assiduous
visitor to Italy so if the RAI archives are to be depended on
I doubt if this series will be very long. The first issue, a
coupling of Debussy’s L’Enfant prodigue with Honegger’s
third symphony added two new works to the Cluytens discography;
here only the Stravinsky is new and La valse is one of
his most famous interpretations. So is it worth it?
Perhaps
surprisingly, I think it is. Those of us who did our record
collecting at budget price during the early 1970s will be well
familiar with this conductor’s work. His Beethoven cycle with
the Berlin Philharmonic somehow captured critical and public
imagination on Classics for Pleasure in a way it had not at
full and mid price. Indeed, in spite of a famous “Pastoral”
several of the symphonies had not been issued in the UK at all
until then. It overtook the Leipzig/Konwitschny as a standard
bargain recommendation. His Ravel also won new friends on this
label. Yet somehow, he never seemed very exciting. Though likeable
and warm-hearted, he seemed smooth and safe in the German classics
and rhythmically slack in the French repertoire when compared
with Monteux or Ansermet. You got the idea that long familiarity
with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra had bred a degree of
contempt on both sides. An exception was always made for two
Ravel scores, La valse and Valses nobles et sentimentales,
where the naturalness of his rubato and the infectious lilt
of his waltz rhythms caused his versions to be longstanding
favourites.
And
yet, when I had the time, some ten years ago, to listen quite
extensively to RAI’s re-broadcasts of their historical material,
I realized that Cluytens live was a rather different animal
from Cluytens in the recording studio. Though I did not review
L’enfant prodigue, the performance is known to me and
I endorse the praise it has received on this site from Terry
Barfoot and Jonathan Woolf. His Milan performance of Schumann’s
Rhenish symphony is almost as exciting as that by René
Liebowitz. It’s not that his interpretations changed, they just
became more communicative and, well, live. I must know
his Paris recording of La valse almost by heart so it
was a curious experience to hear it emerge virtually identical
in its rubatos, its sumptuous string glissandos, its affectionate
rallentandos. The different orchestral timbres sometimes provide
a new gloss and to be frank, there are spots of precarious ensemble
or wonky balance that got sorted out in the studio. On the whole,
though, it’s amazing how he gets a recognizably similar style
and sound from an orchestra he did not often conduct. In spite
of any minor orchestral problems – not that discipline of the
Szell-Rodzinski kind was a major concern in the Paris studios
either – I think I shall prefer this one now. Somehow you feel
that all the interpretative touches are communicated and not
just done. The RAI recording is revealed to be very fine, more
vivid that the CFP LP, but this comment may not apply to EMI’s
CD transfer.
At
the beginning of Pictures you will note that the Milan
trumpeter not only uses a degree of vibrato not favoured in
the UK, but has a narrow-bore instrument nowadays associated
with military bands. This differentiates him from his French
colleagues of the day. As a matter of fact, the Milan RAI orchestra
was still sporting this style of trumpet playing when I came
out here in the mid 1970s, though on this same disc it can be
heard that the Turin orchestra already had more “normal” trumpet
players. The very opening is a bit precarious and it is noticeable
all through that this type of instrument does not blend into
the brass choir very well. On the other hand the nasal, whining
sound is a plus for Samuel Goldenberg & Schmuyle.
I feared for the man as this tricky piece of tonguing began
but he gets through without tripping up. We might note at this
point that one of the reasons why Cluytens got instantly good
results from third rate orchestras was because he seems to have
known the exact tempo at which things like this can be done.
And so it is with the whole work. It’s a piece with all kinds
of traps, exposed solos and the like, but nothing goes seriously
awry. Furthermore, there’s such spirit and a conviction to it
all that I haven’t enjoyed an orchestral Pictures so
much for years.
The
Turin orchestra was always the best of the RAI bands, and the
most European in sound – not just because of the trumpets. Cluytens
would not, I think, have attempted a hard-hitting virtuoso performance
of the Stravinsky even if he had the Chicago Symphony in front
of him. He sees the music as a natural development from Ravel
and goes in for warm phrasing and impressionistic washes of
colour. By the end the playing is pretty incandescent. This
item comes from the same concert as the Debussy on the previous
disc – not the Honegger, as the notes suggest. Terry Barfooot
noted that the audience was a shade less well-behaved in the
Honegger. I can explain that there would certainly have been
a more fashionable public present than was normal in these radio
concerts, and they had come to hear Rubinstein play Brahms 2,
not that horrible modern thing!
Recommendation
for this type of disc really boils down to what sort of listener
you are. I suppose that, as a result of having lived in Milan
so long, attending many concerts with the RAI orchestra, good,
bad and indifferent, and having witnessed its decline and demise,
I tend to have a certain affection for it and to be indulgent
when it’s clearly having a good day, as it is here. If you’ve
lived all your life in Cleveland or Boston maybe you’ll feel
that the excitement of a live concert isn’t incompatible with
pinpoint precision. In which case I doubt if Cluytens’ studio
recordings with the Paris Conservatoire will be for you either.
Arts Archive clearly believe that, in an age of chromium-plated
efficiency, there is a public interested in recapturing past
times when the spirit was what mattered. I belong to that public
and I hope some of my readers do too. And there is also, perhaps,
a public with an interest in the conductors who shaped the 20th
century postwar scene and would like to get a rounder picture
of them. These performances will certainly surprise anybody
who has typecast Cluytens on the basis of some of his sleepier
studio recordings.
That
being so, I hope we will get more. The Schumann Rhenish
and the Brahms 2 with Rubinstein would fit neatly onto one CD.
In Naples, again in 1962, Cluytens conducted Mozart’s Concertone
K.190 with Alfonso Mosesti and Arrigo Pelliccia, no less, and
certainly seems to have known how to conduct Mozart. The same
concert also had Milhaud’s Sérénade en 3 parties op.62,
fascinatingly different from a Celibidache performance also
in the RAI archives. And presumably there was at least one other
work, but I don’t know what.
Incidentally,
the Cluytens’ Pictures was issued on LP back to back with a
rather interesting performance of the piano original by Eduardo
del Pueyo. Now there’s a pianist who got away. I wonder if Arts
Archives …
There
is an interesting essay by Erik Baeck, well translated, but
may I chide Arts Archives over two little things? The exact
names of the orchestras are as I have put them above, and the
venue for the Milan performances wasn’t the “Auditorium RAI,
Milano” because there isn’t one. Presumably it was held in the
Sala Grande of the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi. The Milan concerts
were held there for many years till, in the early 1990s, RAI’s
contract with the Conservatorio was running out and a lot of
public money went into the restructuring of the Teatro del Verme,
which was to become the Auditorium the RAI orchestra had been
lacking all these years. As the work neared completion, RAI
disbanded the orchestra which never got to play a note there.
It’s a very fine hall, by the way.
Christopher
Howell
for
details
Orchestra
Sinfonica di Milano della RAI*, Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della
RAI**/André Cluytens
