Schmidt-Isserstedt was busy in the studios
and recorded for a number of labels — Decca, Telefunken, Capitol,
Mercury, Philips. DG, Odyssey and Electrola amongst them. In
the 1950s he made a valuable series of discs for Capitol and
another series for Telefunken. Tahra has released both in sets
of three CDs each.
It still seems rather anomalous for Telefunken to have
released the live recording of Haydn’s Symphony No.92 given
that the conductor was heard on an Australian tour conducting
the local orchestra in Sydney. Still, that rare LP, LB6056,
housed the performance and it was a good one. The orchestra
was on solid form, responsive and alert. The first movement
repeat is jettisoned but otherwise this is a well balanced,
unsensational reading with an especially well-moulded slow movement.
I think it’s best to overlook the amazingly over-enthusiastic
booklet note claim on the subject of this recording of Dvorák’s
New World Symphony. The balance isn’t especially favourable
and the percussion booms mightily, whilst there’s a rather brusque
quality to the sound — not unlike certain aspects of the performance,
it must be said. The big-boned slow movement drags in Germanic
fashion at the conductor’s misconceived tempo. His favourite
Dvorák symphony, needless to say, was the very much more Brahmsian
Seventh. The second disc carries a straightforward reading of
Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony, symphonically speaking much
more of a success than the New World. It’s hardly in the Mravinsky
class as an act of dramatic engagement, and the second movement
is a bit lackadaisical, but there is a real sense of power held
in reserve throughout. There are two fillers to end this disc
— a roistering Liszt Hungarian Dance and Rimsky’s Flight of
the Bumblebee, which brings out the clean-limbed and athletic
side of the NWDR strings, as almost always on fine form.
The last disc is given over wholly to Schubert’s Great
Symphony. As the companion Fifth showed in the Capitol box,
Schmidt-Isserstedt was an excellent exponent of this composer’s
music. He knew how to bring lightness and agility to the symphonic
canon, too, and here in this stereo recording — as were the
Liszt and Rimsky, but nothing else — he proves his credentials
again. The orchestra plays excellently for him, and he paces
episodes and paragraphs astutely, bringing a considered and
intelligent view to bear. Of all the performances in this box,
this is the one to which I’d direct listeners keen to hear the
conductor at his best.
The transfers have been well engineered and the booklet
is attractively put together with full colour reproductions
of the LP covers. Sami Habra’s notes are partisan to a fault,
but his admiration for Schmidt-Isserstedt shines through everything
he writes and one can both admire, and repudiate, the passion
with which he holds his views, if one so chooses.
Jonathan Woolf
NWDR Symphony Orchestra/Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt Sydney Symphony
Orchestra/Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (Haydn) rec. 1953 (Haydn (live),
Dvorák); 1954 (Tchaikovsky), 1959 (Schubert, Rimsky, Liszt) 