The (P) 2009 and
(C) 2008 on the rear cover are somewhat misleading; these
performances, courtesy of WDR Cologne Broadcasts, were
recorded in 1987-8, when the Cappella Coloniensis were,
if not at the cutting edge of historical performance, at
least among those concerned with authenticity. The presence
of Hans-Martin Linde as their conductor in three of the
four items guarantees that their authenticity is not of
the extreme kind that some ensembles then practised – it’s
effectively period performance without tears, as anyone
who has heard his version of the
Brandenburg Concertos with
his own Linde Consort (formerly on EMI) will be aware.
If memory serves
correctly, I hadn’t encountered Marilyn Schmiege before.
She has an attractive voice and her performance of the
two cantatas is enjoyable. If she sounds a little squally
at times in the
Scena di Berenice, that’s totally
in character for the protagonist of the piece. The two
vocal works together take up less than one third of the
CD, so it seems odd to make
Joseph Haydn Cantatas the
large-print title of the whole programme. I’m not even
sure how correct it is to label the first work a cantata,
when it is properly described as a
scena.
Ingrid Seifert’s
credentials as a historically aware performer are, of course,
well established, since she was the founder of London Baroque.
Her performance of
Violin Concerto No.4 is an attractive
one and she is ably partnered by Linde and the Cappella.
You may well prefer to have this concerto in the company
of other violin concertos, in which case you won’t go far
wrong with Grumiaux and Leppard on a budget-price Eloquence
CD (442 8294,
Concertos Nos. 1 and 4, with concertos
by Michael Haydn and Mozart).
Ferdinand Leitner
is best known as the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic
for DG’s classic stereo remakes of Wilhelm Kempff’s Beethoven
Piano
Concertos. He also made a number of Haydn and Mozart
recordings for DG, none of which is currently available.
I recall these as being old-school performances, albeit
of the sensitive Karl Böhm or Eugen Jochum variety rather
than in overblown big-band style.
If I’d heard this
performance of the
‘Oxford’ Symphony when it was
recorded in 1987, I’d probably have thought it delicate
but not fragile, and sensitive to the spirit of the music;
it still sounds like a happy compromise between the ‘traditional’ and
the ‘authentic’.
It’s not quite
in the category of Colin Davis’s classic recordings of
the ‘London’ Symphonies, but it’s somewhere in the same
territory and I prefer it to Simon Rattle’s recent account;
though Rattle’s timings for three of the four movements
are faster than Leitner’s, his Berlin Philharmonic recording
actually subjectively
sounds heavier to me, despite
all the virtues outlined in John Quinn’s
review.
I really must listen again to these Rattle recordings of
Symphonies
Nos.88-92 and the
Sinfonia Concertane; when
everyone else seems so sold on them, I find myself distinctly
in the minority in recalling them as a trifle heavy (EMI
Classics 3 94237 2, 2 CDs).
Perhaps it would
be more appropriate to compare Leitner’s performance with
the well-received Naxos recording (8.550387, Capella Istropolitana/Barry
Wordsworth) where the size of the ensemble and the performances
themselves are similar, with almost identical tempi. In
the slow movement Leitner is a little faster than Wordsworth,
though not to the extent that I felt that his performance
sounded unfeeling – just the opposite, in fact. I expected
to find Leitner’s
‘Oxford’ Symphony old-fashioned
but ended by enjoying it.
Choice of couplings
may resolve the choice. With Wordsworth you also get enjoyable
performances of Symphonies Nos.85 (
La Reine) from
the Paris set and No.103 (
Drumroll) from the second
London series, not the most logical coupling but, perhaps,
preferable to the
omnium gatherum on Phoenix. It
seems to have become something of a tradition recently
to combine the
Oxford Symphony with the
Scena
di Berenice: René Jacobs does this (Harmonia Mundi
HMC90 1849, with
Symphony No.91), as does Nikolaus
Harnoncourt on a BBC/Opus Arte DVD (OA0821D, with
Arianna
a Naxos – see
review),
but Rattle’s coupling of orchestral works seems to me the
most logical.
These Phoenix
recordings may not be freshly minted, but they still sound
well enough. I’m guessing that they are DDD – Phoenix don’t
specify, unless it’s hidden away where I haven’t found
it. Nor do they advertise the total time of the CD, though
it’s a respectable enough length.
The whole series
to which this recording belongs comes with some very odd
cover shots, in this case depicting chairs stacked at an
alarming angle alongside the tables of a French pavement
café. The booklet devotes a whole page to the artist, Nancy
Horowitz, almost as much as Uwe Kraemer’s notes about the
music. Why do we need to know all this about the artist
when there is nothing at all about the soprano and violin
soloists and not much more about the Cappella Coloniensis?
I’d certainly have liked to know more about Marilyn Schmiege
than about Ms Horowitz.
The booklet implies
that all these works were little known in the 1980s, though
there certainly were recordings of the
Violin Concertos then,
and the
‘Oxford’ Symphony had certainly notched
up several recordings. The English translation is generally
comprehensible, though hardly idiomatic: “In the concerto
in g-major ... Haydn demands as much from the soloist as
the third position” is a garbled version of the original,
which actually means that he makes no high demands on the
soloist,
nothing more difficult than the third position.
This wouldn’t
be one of my top recommendations for Haydn’s anniversary
year, but it is attractive enough, especially as it sells
at an attractive price. If the programme appeals, the performances
and recording will, too.
Brian Wilson
Marilyn
Schmiege (mezzo); Ingrid Seifert (violin); 
