The year 2005 appeared to start well for conductor Oleg Caetani:
Oleg Caetani, has been named as the new music director of the
English National Opera... [and] will take on the post
in September 2006 for the start of the 2006-2007 season... [ABC
News Online, 18 February 2005.]
But then, just ten months later: English National Opera has ...
confirmed that Oleg Caetani would not be taking up his post
as music director only weeks before he was due to start. [The
Stage News, 30 December 2005.]
But if 2005 wasn’t a particularly happy time for Oleg Caetani in
the UK, he had more reason to smile on the other side of the
world. There he took up the post of Chief Conductor and Artistic
Director of Australia’s senior professional orchestra, the Melbourne
Symphony – an association that has, by all accounts, been rather
more fruitful.
Certainly, this new box set of live recordings contains a great many
good things and, while there are no particularly novel interpretative
insights on offer, these uniformly lively, energetic and well
thought out performances are undoubtedly very attractive.
Over the years many conductors have been tempted to personalise these
scores by imposing on them all manner of musical idiosyncrasies
– if not downright eccentricities. And though a few have done
so with skill - if also with arguably bad taste - most have
merely succeeded in revealing their own deficiencies. In fact,
it is usually a case of “less is more” in this repertoire and,
while one may well secretly enjoy the guilty pleasures of, say,
Mengelberg or Stokowski in full Romantic overdrive, their recordings
actually tell us more about those particular conductors themselves
than they do about Tchaikovsky and his music. Thus it is that
the most consistently recommended modern recording of the cycle
is probably the comparatively sober-suited one by Mariss Jansons.
On these new discs of live concert hall recordings, Oleg Caetani
offers us admirably “straight” and unfussy accounts of the scores.
That is not to say, though, that his interpretations lack character
for there are several consistent elements that allow one to
speak of an overall Caetani “approach” to the music. They include
a frequently purposeful tread and disinclination to linger,
general avoidance of rubato, the absence of frequently-encountered
musical neuroticism (the Pathétique) or melodrama (Manfred)
and a wide and carefully controlled dynamic range. All these
characteristics were put into especially sharp relief by the
fact that the last set of Tchaikovsky symphonies I listened
to from beginning to end was conducted by Rostropovich. There
could hardly be a greater contrast, with the Russian quenching
our thirst with a glass of honey and Caetani offering a glass
of water straight from a cold mountain stream.
The avoidance of overt, thickly-applied sentimentality in these new
recordings is most obvious in the “big tunes” of the fifth and
sixth symphonies, but anyone familiar with any of the other
works will also find numerous examples of passages where one
usually finds conductors pulling back for effect – but not in
this case. The effect is both refreshing and illuminating,
and the music gains too in overall structure and coherence.
The most striking advantages of this approach come in Manfred
which, just for once, seems to be far more closely integrated
with the rest of the cycle than usual, rather than sticking
out as something of a sore thumb.
The Melbourne orchestra is clearly a well-drilled band that plays,
moreover, with verve and style and is well recorded in a clear
but generous acoustic. One never knows these days whether to
credit the conductor or his engineers with achieving a fine
orchestral balance but, whichever it is, the praise is well
merited on this occasion. Plenty of delightful detail emerges
throughout and all sections of the orchestra acquit themselves
very well. Audience noise is thankfully minimal. They are,
in fact, so quiet after the final bars of the Pathétique
that I thought for a few seconds that they were not there
at all.
So how does Oleg Caetani fare in just one more comparison – with
his father, the late Igor Markevitch, who, between 1962 and
1966, recorded a Tchaikovsky cycle (including Manfred)
with the London Symphony Orchestra that is still at or near
the top of many critical ratings. All I can say is that, having
listened with so much pleasure to the son’s accounts, I suspect
very strongly that his father would be rather proud of him today.
Rob Maynard
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Oleg Caetani
